AMERICAN COLLEGE 

AND 

UNIVERSITY SERIES 

General Editor: GEORGE PHILIP KRAPP, Ph.D. 

Professor of English in Columbia University 




The University at Night 



COLUMBIA 

X3 



FREDERICK PAUL KEPPEL 

Dean of Columbia College 



NEW YORK 
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 

AMERICAN BRANCH: 35 West 32nd Street 

LONDON, TORONTO. MELBOURNE, AND BOMBAY 
HUMPHREY MILFORD 

1914 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



A 



vV.V' 



Copyright, tgi4 
BY Oxford University Press 

AMERICAN BRANCH 



APR IG 1914 



C CI Aim 30-1 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

CBAFTBB PAGE 

Introductory ix-xvi 

I The Background 1 

II The University of To-day .... 28 

III Ways and IMeans 64 

IV Educational Organization .... 99 
V Teachers and Executives .... 145 

VI Students and Student Life .... 173 

VII An Academic Year 206 

VIII Conclusion 228 

Appendix : 

A. Statistics fob 1857, 1890, 1901, 1913 ... 275 

B. Financial Summaby, 1912-13 275 

C. Student Enrolment 276 

D. Geographical Distribution of Students, 1896, 

1913 277 

E. Statistics Regarding Buildings .... 278 

F. Gifts of $50,000 and above. Class Memorials . 280 

Index 287 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

The University at Night .... Frontispiece ^ 
From a platinum print by Mr. Karl Struss. 

FACING PAGE 

Columbia at Forty-ninth Street . . . . 33 / 

South Court and the Library 49 / 

From a photograph by Mr. Ambrose Fowler. 

Model of the University Buildings . . . . Sly 
From a photograph by Mr. Ambrose Fowler. 

St. Paul's Chapel 97- 

From a photograph by Mr. August Patzig. 

Barnard College 113 ' 

From a photograph by Mr. Ambrose Fowler. 

Teachers College, from the Green .... 129 , 
From a photograph by Miss Amy Whittemore. 

College Teachers in 1886 169 

Kent and Hamilton 209 

From a photograph by Mr. Ambrose Fowler. 

Alma Mater, by Daniel Chester French . . . 259 ^ 



INTRODUCTORY 

"Where should the scholar live? In solitude, or in society, 
in the green stillness of the country, where he can hear the 
heart of Nature beat, or in the dark gray town, where he can 
hear and feel the throbbing heart of man? I make answer for 
him, and say, in the dark gray town." — Longfellow. 

Columbia University is but one of many homes for 
the city scholar. In the United States alone there are 
eight hundred degree-granting institutions, most of them 
in or near the cities. A good number of them have 
been dubbed universities for no better reason than the 
impressive sound of the word, until in some sections uni- 
versities are no rarer than colonels. The abuse of the 
name, however, must not blind us to the significance in 
our life of the real university, which, as the medieval 
cathedral stood six hundred years ago, stands to-day 
as the best embodiment of the uplifting forces of the 
human spirit. In 1893 Professor von Hoist declared that 
we did not have a single university in the sense in which 
the term is used in Europe. To-day there are on the 
North American continent a score. No one of them is 
the great American university. Each leads the others 
in one field or another. It is, indeed, to the general in- 
terest that each should maintain a character true to its 
historic relations and just to the work it finds to do. 

In the pages that follow I have endeavored to em- 
phasize the matters in which Columbia differs for bet- 
ter or for worse from other institutions, and have omit- 
ted, or treated as briefly as possible, those which are 
characteristic of our universities in general. 



X INTRODUCTORY 

Columbia suffers to-day from one too obvious charac- 
teristic, the immense number of students. During the 
past twenty-five years, the aggregate growth of the stu- 
dent body in the most important American universities 
has been almost uniform ; in other words, the ' ' curve ' ' 
has been a straight line. But Columbia has grown more 
rapidly than any of her sisters, and, taking into consid- 
eration her enormous size and her real youth as a uni- 
versity, it is not strange that in many cases too much 
is expected of her, as it often is of an overgrown child. 
It need hardly be said that Columbia is herself pain- 
fully aware of her deficiencies; indeed, since the first 
stirrings of university life, some fifty-odd years ago, 
she has been rather conspicuously insufficient unto her- 
self. 

At present she has also the largest financial resources 
among American universities. This predominance, like 
that in numbers, may well be only temporary, in view of 
the already magnificent and rapidly increasing annual 
appropriations to the State and Provincial universities, 
to say nothing of the immense potential value of the lands 
which some of them own. Twenty-five years ago Colum- 
bia was popularly supposed to have more money than 
she knew what to do with, but President Low and Presi- 
dent Butler have, I think, effectually disabused the pub- 
lic mind on this point. Columbia 's wealth is significant, 
indeed, not so much in its amount as in its origin. The 
ordinary sources of university wealth have hardly been 
touched. Nothing has come from the national govern- 
ment, through the Morrill Grant or otherwise. For 
nearly a century nothing has been received from the 
State of New York, and for a century and a half noth- 
ing from any religious body. Of the two great national 
patron saints of learning to-day, St. Andrew has not 



INTRODUCTORY xi 

yet identified himself with Columbia, and the direct 
gifts of St. John, although useful and welcome, bear 
but a small proportion either to his general largess or 
to the resources of the institution. The alumni body 
of the undergraduate schools is relatively small and, 
in spite of a few instances of striking generosity, the 
gifts of alumni as a whole make but a relatively small 
total. 

Columbia is what she is because she is Columbia 
University in the City of New York. Her growth has 
been a function of the growth of the city, and it is to 
the city that she owes and is trying to pay her chief 
debt. It is important to emphasize this just now, because 
her increasing hold upon the country at large is obscur- 
ing her fundamental relation to the city. 

It was a little group of New Yorkers who founded 
King's College in 1754, when Manhattan Island had 
fewer inhabitants than the University now has stu- 
dents and but thirteen of them held academic degrees. 
Then as now, however, the population was extraordi- 
narily diverse in make-up — a diversity that has been re- 
flected from the first both in the cosmopolitanism of 
the faculty and in the various elements in the student 
body. In a time of bitter religious controversy, these 
men drew a charter which, when we remember that Har- 
vard and Yale were then hardly more than sectarian 
divinity schools, was extraordinarily liberal. It was a 
day of narrow intellectual outlook; Oxford and Cam- 
bridge were at a low ebb, the British Museum was but 
a year old, and " Johnson's Dictionary " had not yet 
been published. The first announcement of King's Col- 
lege, nevertheless, showed a breadth of scope and a con- 
fidence in the future that were remarkable. If, how- 
ever, intellectual life was unprogressive, it was on the 



xii INTRODUCTORY 

other hand a time of keen political ferment. It was in 
ITSi that the Colonial Congress met at Albany to discuss 
Colonial Union. The little college soon caught the spirit 
of the day, and I think I am right in saying that the 
alumni and students of no institution took a more prom- 
inent part proportionally to their numbers in the Amer- 
ican Revolution, and in the founding of the Republic. 
The institution that trained Hamilton and Livingston 
and Jay justified its existence to New York, and to the 
nation at large ; and, although the nation paid but little 
heed to her for a century or more, the fortunes of the 
College and of the City were from then on bound closely 
together. 

When peace was restored, the first student to enter 
the College, now Columbia — the word had been coined 
and popularized in a Revolutionary war song — was De- 
Witt Clinton, and it was he who, with three other alumni 
— Morris, Stevens, and Tompkins — made the growth of 
New York possible by strengthening her strategic posi- 
tion through the construction of canal and railroad. 

For nearly a centuiy the city did little in return, and 
the financial struggles of the College, while less pic- 
turesque than those of the State universities, were no 
less bitter and were made the harder by the necessity for 
the genteel keeping-up of urban appearances. Finally, 
however, the increase in population gave value to two 
tracts of land, one of which had been given by Trinity 
Church, with a small addition from the city, and the 
other by the State Legislature. Without the rents from 
these tracts the later development into a university would 
have been impossible. It was not until the end of the 
nineteenth century that any considerable addition was 
made to the endowment from private sources. The mag- 
nificent gifts of recent years have in the great majority 



INTRODUCTORY xiii 

of cases been made by New Yorkers who wished in some 
appropriate way to express their obligation to the city. 
No better example can be given than the bequest of John 
Stewart Kennedy in equal parts to the University, the 
Public Library, the Museum of Art, and the Presbyte- 
rian Hospital. 

From the first Columbia, if poor in funds, has been 
wealthy in the men who have served her. Of those no 
longer living, four at least had in large degree the proph- 
et 's vision : Samuel Johnson, Hamilton Fish, Samuel Rug- 
gles, and Frederick A. P. Barnard. It is noteworthy that 
all were trustees ; for the loyalty, courage, and foresight 
of her trustees have been from the beginning until the 
present day a notable and vital characteristic. She has 
had also from the first her great teachers and her great 
scholars; without these no university can come into 
being. In the words of President Butler's inaugural: 
" The thirst of man for the truth, his imperious ambi- 
tion to know what lies behind the screen that veils new 
knowledge from his eyes, his anxious haste to touch the 
hem of the garment of a great personality, a great 
scholar, a seer, a prophet of literature or of science — 
these are the feelings stirring in the hearts and minds 
of men that have brought them into membership with 
universities and that have given universities to the 
world." 

About the original College a number of schools have 
clustered, partly by outgrowth from within, partly by 
annexation, and partly by treaties of federation. Colum- 
bia's organization has been likened to the British consti- 
tution, on the ground that it ought not to work but it 
does. She has been called a complex congeries of prov- 
inces, allies, crown colonies, protectorates, residencies, 
and native states. Her treatment of certain problems 



xiv INTRODUCTORY 

arising from her characteristic development may have 
its lesson for those outside her walls, notably her achieve- 
ment of essential educational unity in spite of diverse 
financial control and initiative, her attempts to solve 
the problem of an unprecedentedly rapid and diversi- 
fied growth by the gradual but rigorous raising of stand- 
ards, and by close attention to what is called in business 
" functional administration." Not alone by formal ar- 
rangements for exchange of professors, and by world- 
wide distribution of students, but even more by the 
countless intangible effects of the freemasonry of scholar- 
ship, the institution to-day holds a place of national and 
international importance among universities. 

Columbia's academic peace has not been unbroken, 
but even her troubles have their usefulness if their les- 
sons can be read aright. At the very outset there w^ere 
violent protests at the prominent part taken by Trinity 
Church. There w^as another heated period in 1811 upon 
the appointment of a Presbyterian executive. This was 
the year of a riot at Commencement that affected New 
York politics for long afterward. There was further 
excitement at the time of the founding of New York 
University in 1830. Twenty-four years later a bitter 
controversy regarding a professorial appointment pre- 
vented the celebration of the centennial of the founding 
of the College and led to an investigation by the State 
Senate. In 1891 the reorganization of the School of 
Law against the desire of the venerable and reno^^'ned 
Professor Dwight precipitated another controversy'. The 
abolition of intercollegiate football in 1905 upon the 
ground that, for Columbia at any rate, the game had 
become an academic nuisance, was the occasion of vig- 
orous protest. Within recent years the University has 
received much criticism with respect to the departure 



INTRODUCTORY xv 

of certain prominent professors. Some cases were clearly 
" academic suicides," others were caused by honest dif- 
ferences of opinion, by misunderstandings, or by in- 
evitable clashes of temperament. Like most of the 
world's troubles, some might have been averted if fore- 
sight were as clear as hindsight, and all of them were 
aggravated by the high pressure of city life, and by a 
city press eager for " stories " and not too scrupulous 
as to where they are obtained or how they are em- 
broidered. The difference between the real facts and the 
published reports has sometimes been absurd. Any uni- 
versity must expect criticism, deserved and undeserved, 
but the serious public is fortunately learning to build its 
judgments not upon incidental difficulties, but upon gen- 
eral service to the community. 

In writing this book it has not been easy to make a 
satisfactory selection of those details which, to quote 
a character in *' The Mikado," are needed to embellish 
and adorn an otherwise bald and uninteresting narra- 
tive. Since the University came into conscious being, 
about twenty years ago, so much has come into print 
that one meets truly the embarrassment of wealth. In 
particular, Professor Van Amringe and Mr. Pine of the 
Board of Trustees deserve all praise for their preserva- 
tion- of historical traditions and their laborious col- 
lection of material, as does also Professor Munroe Smith 
for his invaluable use of this material in describing the 
actual organizing of the University. I am indebted 
mainly to the " History of Columbia University," pub- 
lished upon the 150th anniversary of the founding of 
King's College, to the annual reports of Presidents Bar- 
nard, Low, and Butler with their appendices, to the 
Columbia University Quarterly, the Alumni News, the 
various student publications, and the Columbia Handr 



xvi INTRODUCTORY 

hook, recently published by the University Press. It will 
be seen also that much has been borrowed from Dr. Slos- 
son's suggestive and stimulating comments in " Great 
American Universities." Since my book makes no pre- 
tensions to original historical scholarship, I have ven- 
tured to avoid quotation marks and footnotes by a prefa- 
tory general confession that in many places " what I 
thought I might require I went and took." 

It has been my effort throughout to select and ar- 
range the material with a view to emphasizing what 
seems to me to be the fundamentally important thing — 
the essential unity of the University in organization and 
in spirit, rather than to try to give a detailed picture of 
its diverse component elements. 




THE BACKGROUND 

The Real Birthday. Strivings Before 1852. Financial and 
Other Factors. The Old College. Inquiry by Trustees' Commit- 
tee. Statutes of 1858. Law and Mines. President Barnard. 
His Work and its Importance. The Reports. College Studies and 
Discipline. Advanced Work. Professional Courses. Training of 
Teachers. Admission of Women. Barnard's Personality and 
Memoiy. 

Columbia may be said to have had not one birthday, 
but three: a first in 1754, when Samuel Verplanek en- 
rolled himself as a member of King's College; a second 
when DeWitt Clinton in 1787 was examined for ad- 
mission to the revived institution, newly christened 
Columbia College ; and a third when a body of respect- 
able middle-aged New York gentlemen adopted what 
is known as the Report of 1857. The centennial of 
the second birthday was duly commemorated in 1887, 
the sesqui-centennial of the first was made an occa- 
sion of fitting academic pomp in 1904; the third birth- 
day has never been celebrated, but it is, nevertheless, the 
real birthday of Columbia University as we know it to- 
day. At the risk of being fanciful, I might liken the 
growth of the institution to that of a tree; the roots 
are laid in the period prior to the Revolution, then a 
long unbranching trunk up to the middle of the nine- 
teenth century, nearly a hundred years of slow develop- 
ment without expansion. Following the Report of 1857 
came the budding of the great branches which more than 
anything else were to change the small, almost parochial 



2 THE BACKGROUND 

college into the great university of to-day. The crown 
of the tree was to come long years later, but it never 
could have been formed without the work of the men 
of 1857, who mark the conscious beginning of the Uni- 
versity. It was not so long ago, after all. One of our ac- 
tive trustees to-day was an alumnus of ten years' stand- 
ing when this report was adopted, and another was an 
undergraduate in the College. 

The movement which began in 1852 upon the sugges- 
tion of President King was not indeed the first attempt 
on the part of Columbia to become a university. As far 
back as 1774, a proposed Charter of an American Uni- 
versity was approved by the Governors of King's Col- 
lege, and forwarded to London. The outbreak of the 
Revolution, however, left it in some Government pigeon- 
hole, where it doubtless still lies. The contribution of 
the institution to those stirring times was made indeed 
rather through the students — Hamilton, Livingston, Jay, 
and others — than through the faculty and governors. 
A second attempt was made in 1784 when the State 
Legislature adopted an elaborate scheme for a State 
university with the old King's College as its core. A 
third attempt was made in 1810, and a fourth in 1830. 
The fifth attempt, indeed, was also apparently doomed 
to failure. The Schools of Jurisprudence, Letters, and 
Science, founded in 1858, died almost stillborn. The 
College, however, had builded better than it knew, and 
from some of the incidental changes made as a result of 
the long and searching investigation of that day have 
come the far-reaching results which make this the real 
birthday of the University. There were two reasons why 
this fifth attempt succeeded where the others had failed 
— the first material, and the second spiritual. In 1857, 
the CoUcge was just beginning to see the outcome of the 



FINANCIAL AND OTHER FACTORS 3 

courageous policy of her trustees in holding the land of 
the institution during long years of bitter and humiliat- 
ing poverty. In 1820, the total income had fallen to 
about $13,000. Thirty years later, it was only $15,000, 
with a heavy debt as a result of successive annual defi- 
cits. It was not indeed until 1863 that the increasing 
income was sufficient to meet the cost of annual main- 
tenance and not until 1872 that the accumulated debts 
were wiped out. During its early years, Columbia had 
turned to the State for assistance in times of financial 
need, and had, it is true, received not infrequent grants, 
which apparently were given somewhat in the spirit 
of the man in the parable who aided his neighbor be- 
cause of his importunity. At any rate, Columbia never 
fared nearly so well as her northern neighbor. Union 
College, in the matter of grants in cash. The last gift 
of the State, the Hosack Botanical Garden (presented 
as a sort of recompense because a previous grant of land 
in the northern part of what was supposed to be New 
York had turned out to be in Vermont), was regarded 
by the trustees as a particularly white and unwelcome 
elephant. Indeed, at the time of its transfer, it Avould 
not have brought more than $6,000 or $7,000 at public 
sale. As the city grew, however, the value of this land 
increased, as did that of the previous grant by Trinity 
Church in the lower part of the city, and the trustees 
must often have been sorely tempted to meet their press- 
ing obligations by the sale of real estate. Their courage 
in holding on, which was strengthened perhaps by some 
unfortunate earlier ventures, was, as we now know, 
miraculously rewarded, and as early as 1850 it became 
clear that the time had come when they not only could 
but should build for the future. The material prospects 
of the College, in a word, were wholly different from 



4 THE BACKGROUND 

what they were at the time of the previous efforts to- 
ward expansion. 

The second and even more important factor was that 
of human personality. The newly elected president, 
Charles King, was a man of experience and broad point 
of view, and it was he who in 1852 called attention to 
the opportunities and responsibilities of the College for 
the future. It is characteristic of Columbia, however, 
that the actual constructive work was done by a group 
of men in the Board of Trustees. The original commit- 
tee on the college course was selected by ballot and con- 
sisted of "William Betts, Dr. Henry J. Anderson, and 
Hamilton Fish. In its preliminary report, it recom- 
mended the immediate removal of the College from the 
site in Park Place and endorsed in principle the estab- 
lishment of a university system in addition to the under- 
graduate course. The Rev. Dr. John Knox was added to 
the committee in 1854. It is interesting to remember 
that the work of the committee was carried on through 
a period of the bitterest controversy regarding a certain 
professorial appointment, so heated that it was impos- 
sible for the College to celebrate its one-hundredth anni- 
versary in 1854. 

Another element was the growing consciousness of 
New York that she was becoming a metropolitan city. It 
was too early to expect this consciousness to appear in 
individual gifts, but a good example of the widespread 
interest in the work of the College was shown by the 
offer of Peter Cooper to permit the so-called university 
courses to be held at Cooper Union. Finally, one must 
not forget the changing intellectual spirit of the time. 
As Mr. Low has pointed out, the American college in 
its beginning was simply an English college transplanted 
to American soil. It trained many forceful and effective 



THE OLD COLLEGE 5 

men, but it did not make many scholars. By 1857, how- 
ever, there were about one hundred and fifty men in 
America who had received training in German universi- 
ties, and their influence was beginning to be felt. West 
Point, too, was at the height of its influence, and the 
thoroughness and efficiency of its teaching is constantly 
referred to in the report. 

Before taking up in detail the work of this commit- 
tee, it may be well to consider for a moment just what 
it had to work upon. Columbia College, in spite of 
small numbers and its almost wholly local appeal at the 
time, had an honored and historic tradition. The broad 
basis of religious toleration in its original charter was 
doubtless due to controversy and resulting compromise 
at the time, but, none the less, the charter is one of the 
most interesting and significant documents of the eight- 
eenth century in America. The College, too, had never 
wholly forgotten the prophetic vision of its first presi- 
dent, Samuel Johnson. The high proportion of the 
alumni who had achieved national distinction is another 
factor not to be overlooked. In the " History of Colum- 
bia University," Dean Van Amringe has given a most 
impressive summary of these men and their accomplish- 
ments. 

Although the number of students had remained at 
about one hundred and fifty from 1820 until almost 1856, 
and although its make-up was almost wholly local, 
Columbia College was not without very considerable 
prestige, particularly so far as instruction in the classics 
went. It was generally recognized as representing a 
higher type of instruction in this field than did the New 
England colleges. The College was, however, hardly 
more than what we would to-day call a high school. 
Indeed, it was founded originally on the model of Eton, 



6 THE BACKGROUND 

rather than of Oxford. The students were young, aver- 
aging, as we learn from the report of the committee, 
almost two years less than at Princeton. The type of 
instruction was elementary, four weeks of each year be- 
ing given over to review. The energies of the teachers 
were devoted in large part to matters of minute disci- 
pline. There was practically no scientific equipment, 
and the library, though better than the average, was 
but little used. , President King's published views on the 
** evils which must result from desultory reading " 
seem to have expressed the general point of view of the 
faculty. 

Except for a grammar school which was soon to pass 
to other hands, instruction was given only in the under- 
graduate classical course, wholly prescribed. The pioneer 
medical school, founded in King's College, had parted 
company from Columbia forty years before, and the in- 
termittent lectures in law, historically famous as the 
groundwork of Kent's Commentaries, were no longer 
given. 

The committee went about its work in a thorough man- 
ner. Each member of the College staff, including the 
president, gave extended testimony before the commit- 
tee, and, although it is clear that perhaps the majority 
were in a rut, two men at least were able to give advice 
of real significance — one of the elders, Anthon, and the 
youngest member of the faculty, McCulloh. In addi- 
tion, the committee obtained the testimony of a dozen 
representative educators from outside, including Pro- 
fessor Lieber of the University of South Carolina, who 
made so strong an impression that he was shortly called 
to Columbia, President Francis Wayland of Brown, Pro- 
fessor l^artlett of West Point, whose advice was admira- 
ble, President Mark Hopkins of "Williams, Chancellor 



INQUIRY BY TRUSTEES' COMMITTEE 7 

Tappan of Michigan, and Bishop Horatio Potter. The 
members of the committee also visited other institutions. 
The report with the testimony makes a volume of seven 
hundred pages of most interesting reading. It must not 
be forgotten that the committee was originally one on the 
college course and that much of its work had to do with 
the details of collegiate instruction, and, unfortunately, 
of student discipline. The misdemeanors of under- 
graduates are given in delightful detail, including, for 
example, the expulsion of an undergraduate (who has 
since worthily represented the United States at the 
Hague Peace Conference) for throwing shot about the 
classroom. Fortunately, the culprit was reinstated. 
Other offenders later served their Alma Mater as trus- 
tees. From the outsiders, the committee perhaps got 
more advice than they bargained for. Francis Way- 
land, for instance, who writes '' as an elder soldier, not 
a better," tells them frankly that they have too great 
confidence in the efScaey of laws for the government of 
a college. Wayland, indeed, saw more clearly perhaps 
than any of those concerned in this movement the ulti- 
mate destiny of Columbia. In closing his testimony, he 
writes : * * When I think of your position, I tremble at the 
responsibility which rests upon you. You have a noble 
field before you, the noblest probably now on earth." 
And this was written about a college of one hundred and 
fifty disorderly boys. 

In spite of the extraordinary broad-mindedness of this 
committee of the trustees, shown both by their manner 
of gaining information, and by the report which they 
finally presented, curious examples of narrowness crop 
out here and there. The fact, for example, that three 
of the professors ' ' wrote books ' ' is solemnly noted as a 
possible cause of educational inefficiency. The members 



8 THE BACKGROUND 

were greatly concerned with matters of student order 
and, in spite of Wayland's warning, were busy devising 
methods to enforce it by law. They had an almost pa- 
thetic trust in the efiScaey of text-books, even for gradu- 
ate instruction, *and needed a sharp reminder from Chan- 
cellor Tappan that such a thing as academic freedom was 
either possible or desirable. 

On November 27, 1858, the committee presented its 
report. If* was evident from the adoption of the 
Statutes, which put the report into actual effect, that the 
trustees realized two things: first, that their responsi- 
bility was far greater than their operations at that time 
would meet; and second, that what they were destined 
to do must come by growth, not by creation. They knew 
that the demand for higher instruction must be created, 
and created primarily by the appointment of teachers 
of the highest type. 

One example of the new spirit is sho'mi by a 
resolution authorizing an appropriation of $200 " to 
test the advantage of instructing the students of the 
College in Chemistry with the aid of experiments and 
manipulation performed by the students themselves un- 
der the direction and superintendence of the professor. ' ' 
This sum given in 1856 was of more significance than 
the present annual appropriation for chemistr}^ although 
the latter is more than five hundred times as large. 

An essential feature of the scheme was the calling of 
visiting professors of distinction to give " university " 
lectures. That the men and their subjects were wisely 
chosen needs no further proof than the fact that Marsh 's 
" History of the English Language " and Guyot's 
" Earth and Man " were based upon lectures given 
at Columbia at this time. Although the plan was 
not practically successful and was soon abandoned, 



LAW AND MINES 9 

its interest to us is not merely as a forecast of 
the elaborate system of exchange professorships in 
operation to-day, but it had an immediately prac- 
tical result in the calling of two of the visitors to 
chairs at Columbia — Lieber and Dwight. Lieber, with 
Naime, Davies, and Peck, who were appointed during 
the same period of hopeful expansion, immensely broad- 
ened the intellectual horizon of the College. The ap- 
pointment of Dwight was even more significant, for with 
it began what President Barnard called the period of the 
professional school. It must be remembered, as Pro- 
fessor Lee has pointed out, that the beginnings of pro- 
fessional education in America are found not within 
institutions of learning, but in the familiar personal 
association of the students with men in active practice. 
"When in 1858 the trustees appointed Dwight as pro- 
fessor of law, it was not their intention to establish a 
professional school. They soon came to the conclusion, 
however, that success was more likely should the work 
be organized with a view to actual admission to the 
Bar. The prompt success of the Law School and its 
rapid growth were without parallel in the contempo- 
rary history of professional education. Although the 
Columbia Law School had about eighteen predecessors, 
it had, by the third year of its existence, taken the lead 
in numbers and prestige. Its success was wholly due 
to the extraordinary teaching ability of Professor 
Dwight. For more than twenty years he gave all the 
instruction to candidates for a degree in law. The 
Law School, however, was not to stand alone. As a 
result of the new attitude of the trustees, the College of 
Physicians and Surgeons was in 1860 brought back to 
Columbia. The School retained its independence, and 
indeed the alliance with the College was but a tenuous 



10 THE BACKGROUND 

one; still the fact that it was made at all is of signifi- 
cance. In 1863, during the period of depression and 
uncertainty caused by the Civil War, an even more 
important step was taken. Thomas Egleston was the 
spokesman of a group of men who desired to establish 
a School of Mines in America, and a formal communica- 
tion from him was considered by the trustees in April, 
1863. At that time, there were but six schools of applied 
science in the United States, including Annapolis and 
West Point, and there was no training in mining engi- 
neering. In view of the financial stringency caused by 
the war, the trustees felt that they could offer merely 
a habitation on the Columbia campus, but this was 
enough for Egleston and his colleagues — General Vin- 
ton, who, like Egleston, had been a student at the Paris 
Ecole des Mines, and Charles F. Chandler, a graduate 
of Gottingen and at the time a professor in Union 
College, then perhaps the most progressive of American 
institutions. They received the cordial co-operation of 
the professors of science who were already members of 
the College, and three years after its foundation Pro- 
fessor John S. Newberry, the distinguished geologist, 
came to the School. Like the Law School, the new School 
of Mines gained prompt success, and its influence on 
the institution as a whole was even more marked be- 
cause of the larger number of men who were drawn 
into the academic family, and the immediate influence 
of their ideas upon the instruction of the institution as 
a whole. 

One important feature of the Statutes of 1858 was the 
splitting off of the senior year from the rest of the 
college program, and the establishment of specialized 
work for seniors. Although this was abandoned three 
years later, it laid the foundation for the cliaracteristic 



PRESIDENT BARNARD 11 

Columbia policy of the combined collegiate and advanced 
or professional course. 

When one considers the things which the report of 
1858 failed to accomplish, one must remember several 
factors. Even if the Civil War had not broken out, 
the trustees' plans would probably have proved in 
advance of the times. We must remember that Johns 
Hopkins was not founded until nearly twenty years 
later, that no well-organized graduate instruction was 
given anywhere in the United States until in 1861 at 
Yale, and that Harvard conferred her first degree of 
doctor of philosophy in 1873. The university plan failed 
not because of intrinsic defects, but because it was put 
into operation two decades before the American public 
was ready for it. President Barnard himself realized that 
the scheme as proposed was too abrupt and too large, and 
too much in advance of the public sense of the educational 
wants of the day, and that its practical significance lay 
in the establishment of the Schools of Law and Mines. 

It is indeed characteristically American that the path 
of progress and development at Columbia was not di- 
rectly through pure science but through the applied sci- 
ences. Someone has said that the only things we have 
to-day that our ancestors had not are more complete 
knowledge of the laws of nature and more willingness to 
apply them, and that the willingness to apply usually pre- 
cedes the desire for knowledge. 

In this connection it is interesting to remember 
that many of Columbia's most distinguished investi- 
gators in pure science received such formal training as 
they got in schools of applied science. For example, 
Bard, Mitchill, Hosack, Anderson, Torrey, Newberry 
were all graduates of medical schools. Woodward, Brit- 
ton, Kemp, and others were trained as engineers. 



12 THE BACKGROUND 

Not the least significant evidence of the renascence 
of 1857 was the type of man selected to succeed Presi- 
dent King upon his retirement in 1864. Curiously 
enough, Frederick A. P. Barnard, a former chancellor 
of the University of Mississippi, had been a candidate 
for the professorship of physics at Columbia the year 
before, but was unsuccessful, the appointment going to 
Professor Rood. At the time of his appointment as 
president, Barnard was no longer a young man. He 
had indeed been a schoolmate of Mark Hopkins. He 
was older when he began his incumbency than was Seth 
Low when he ended his to become mayor of the city of 
New York. Barnard, nevertheless, was young enough 
in spirit for his task. It is hard, says Professor Mun- 
roe Smith, to rate too highly the prompt courage with 
which he adopted the university policy, or the stub- 
born faith with which he predicted its ultimate triumph. 

Dean Van Amringe describes Barnard as " a man of 
extensive and profound knowledge of many fields, an 
exact scientist and an elegant classical scholar, a poet, 
a musician of no mean quality, of strong imagination and 
enthusiastic temper, long a student of education in all 
its aspects, with a deep and growing sense of the in- 
adequacy of educational opportunities and methods, with 
a prophet 's vision of the coming exactions of the future 
and of the way to meet them ; bold in the statement of 
his views, persistent and eloquent in their advocacy, and 
incapable of discouragement." 

We have to look back to Samuel Johnson to find a 
president who had the same buoyant confidence in the 
future. Barnard foresaw the destiny of Columbia, al- 
though he realized that it would not come in his own 
day. In spite of very scant encouragement, he held the 
noses of the trustees to the fundamental problems 



THE REPORTS 13 

which he realized must be solved before Columbia 
could become a university. He urged from the first that 
her need * * must be measured not by the presumed inter- 
ests of a limited and narrow sphere, but by the urgent 
ones of a bold community; that, in so far as New York 
comes to college, it in a most effectual maimer helps 
itself." He attributed the absence of private munifi- 
cence, rightly, to lack of enterprise on the part of the 
trustees. " While the funds entrusted to us are not 
given us to waste," he told them, " so neither are they 
given us to hoard." 

To one who never had the opportunity of knowing 
Barnard personally, the man lives and grows in his 
reports. In the words of the present Barnard Professor 
of Education, Dean Russell, these reports during the 
twenty-four years of his presidency " are unexcelled 
in the literature of American education. No current 
problem escaped Barnard's attention and every prob- 
lem that he discussed was thereafter the easier of solu- 
tion, because of his comprehensive view and convincing 
argument." Buried amongst trivial details as to the 
text-books used by freshmen and sophomores are found 
utterances of real prophetic import. No one who 
reads the reports of 1881-83 would realize that in 
Barnard's first report there is a warning against the 
" recent and very plausible theory of Darwin." Such 
development would be remarkable in any man, but is 
marvelous in a man who wrote these great reports after 
he had passed threescore years and ten. 

Let me give the list of some of the topics considered 
by Barnard in his 1881 report, written at the age of 
seventy-two : 

The entrance age of college students. 

The effect of voluntary classes upon scholarship. 



14 THE BACKGROUND 

Discipline and student self-government. 

The imperfection of preparatory instruction and a 
mode of improving conditions. 

(Education as a science, and the establishment of a 
special chair and a department in this field. 

The degree of master of arts in course. 

The higher education of women and the recommenda- 
tion that women be admitted to Columbia College. 

Special report on the several schools of the University. 

Ills work for Columbia was too many-sided to be 
readily summarised, but it falls perhaps into the follow- 
ing groups: (1) The modernizing of the curriculum 
of the undergraduate college, and of its administra- 
tion. (2) The establishment of graduate study upon a 
permanent basis. (3) The development of the several 
professional schools of the University. (■!) The 
movement for the professional study of education. (5) 
The campaign for the higher education of women. 

Barnard kept a jealous eye on what was happening 
elsewhere and found why it was happening. He was 
perhaps the first American educator to use the statistical 
method so common to-day to clear up problems on which 
he was in doubt, and to prove his point in argument. 
He watched closely the striking success of Cornell from 
its very foundation to see what lesson it could teach 
the older colleges. He perceived that Harvard was out- 
stripping his own Alma Mater, Yale, in nuiT>bers, and 
analyzed the reasons for the benefit of Columbia. He 
attributed Harvard's growth to the elective system, 
which by the way he had himself advocated before it 
was adopted at Cambridge, and annually furnished the 
Columbia trustees with illuminating details, showing 
the growth of Harvard at the expense of her sister insti- 
tutions in the East. As rapidly as the faculty and the 



COLLEGE STUDIES AND DISCIPLINE 15 

trustees would permit it, he introduced the elective 
system at Columbia, on the ground that under the old 
fixed curriculum the American college had for a quarter 
of a century been endeavoring to accomplish what it 
could not perform. Finding no reliable statistics as to 
student enrollment throughout the country, he labori- 
ously built them up for himself from the original sources 
and printed the results. These showed clearly a drop- 
ping off in college attendance, proportionately to the 
population, and Barnard closed his study with these 
characteristic words : " As the truth, which time silently 
discloses, even though unwelcome must be recognized 
and distinctly uttered sooner or later by somebody, it has 
fallen to the undersigned in this case to be the inter- 
preter of events which he accepts as he finds them, but 
which he would not be understood to contemplate with 
entire satisfaction or even without some serious con- 
cern." 

He entered each of his multifarious campaigns exhil- 
arated by the joy of what Professor Trent has called the 
only rational foinn of aggressive combat — that for ideals 
against prejudices — and he found, I may say in passing, 
enough prejudices to keep him in a state of continual 
exhilaration. 

In his advocacy of the elective system, Barnard was 
influenced perhaps primarily by the fact that " the 
adoption of a liberal system of elective study prepares 
a college to rise naturally and easily to the higher level 
of post-graduate instruction." He saw that ** it is 
probably only by some gradual transformation of exist- 
ing institutions that we shall in this country ever be able 
to realize the ideal of a continental university." But 
he also believed in an elective system for the sake of the 
undergraduates. In his judgment, by the age of say 



16 THE BACKGROUND 

eighteen, the mind has normally taken its set and the 
area of diminishing returns has been reached with re- 
gard to disciplinary training in uncongenial subjects. 
The actual beginning of an elective system in Barnard's 
time was made when the class of 1870, of which Seth 
Low was a member, made formal application for elective 
privileges in the senior year, as a result of which some 
slight provision was made by the trustees. As soon 
as the elective policy made it possible for the students 
to take advantage of it, Barnard established work in new 
fields. Professor Brander Matthews, who was a member 
of the class of 1871, tells that in his day there w^as no 
provision for instruction in the language or literature 
of France, practically no history, and but one hour a 
week of political economy, Barnard succeeded in get- 
ting good provision in the modern languages and in the 
field of political science. He pleaded also for oppor- 
tunities in biology, wiiich were not provided until the 
administration of his successor, and also for the estab- 
lishment of an adequate department of the fine arts, 
which unfortunately is not yet accomplished. 

Barnard realized that the colleges continued to recog- 
nize their assumed obligations as responsible guardians 
of students' morals, although one by one they had re- 
linquished the instrumentalities by which alone they had 
been enabled to discharge them. He pointed out the 
folly of expecting that, when the system of physical 
restraint and immediate supervision had been abandoned, 
the same end could be secured by means of written laws 
providing claims and penalties for specified offenses. He 
vShowed the serious danger that lay in the existence of 
a body of unenforced and unenforceable statutory en- 
actments. 

At Columbia, Barnard found an elaborate, artificial, 



ADVANCED WORK 17 

and ineffectual system of student rating, which he broke 
down as promptly as he could. Wherever possible, he 
cut ruthlessly through obsolete and useless machinery 
which had persisted from the days when the College was 
really a preparatory school; for he realized that then, 
as now, the great body of young men in college are 
really interested in study, and that for this majority 
elaborate machinery to make them study is wasteful and 
foolish. Owing to the fact that at the start the trus- 
tees did not feel themselves responsible for the School 
of Mines, no elaborate system of rules for students was 
devised for this school. The president was prompt to 
point out that the students got on just as well without 
them, and, using the new school as an example, he 
brought about some relief from the burden of regula- 
tions previously endured by the college students in arts. 

In 1881, he considered and advocated the develop- 
ment of student self-government, pointing out the stu- 
dents' evident ability to manage efficiently their own 
voluntary undertakings. From what alumni of his day 
have told me, Barnard was easily deceived in the matter 
of student disorder; the service which he rendered in 
giving the serious students a sense of responsibility and 
academic dignity, however, cannot be regarded as unim- 
portant, and some of them, at any rate, were made to 
realize the folly of a system of ethics which regards 
serious offenses as trivial, merely because performed by 
college students. 

He endeavored to interest the parents of students in 
the academic progress of their sons, a discouraging but 
not a hopeless undertaking. He tried to systematize and 
make more logical the business of getting students into 
the college. In one of his reports he proposed some- 
thing very like the present College Entrance Examina- 



18 THE BACKGROUND 

tion Board. He realized the importance of faculty 
guidance in the matter of elective studies and also the 
importance of getting information from the teachers in 
preparatory schools regarding the students coming to 
the College. These two matters are now part of the regu- 
lar machinery of Columbia College, in the work of the 
student's academic advisers, and of the University Com- 
mittee on Admissions. 

Throughout the whole institution Barnard endeavored 
to make it clear that the ambition of students and teach- 
ers should be the mastery of subjects rather than of 
books. For the private work and growth of professors, 
he urged the need of separate studies for all members 
of the teaching staff. 

In making provision for the beginning of graduate, 
or as he called it, university instruction, Barnard was 
not deterred by the necessity of small beginnings. " The 
university sj-^stem," he wrote, " is destined to estab- 
lish itself in our country. It will be the outgrowth of 
our existing college system. Our universities will be 
evolutions and not new creations. They w-ill be formed 
by the expansion of the system of post-graduate instruc- 
tion. Few colleges, however, are likely to become uni- 
versities. Columbia College, through her financial 
strength and her position in New York, will be among 
those few. The time has come when she should begin 
to address herself to the duties which touch a prospective 
destiny and the responsibility involved." " Limitation 
of knowledge is not, ' ' he says elsewhere, * ' like deficiency 
of food, attended by a craving for a larger supply. It 
is characteristic of ignorance to be content not to know, 
and of partial information, to be puffed up with the 
conceit that there is little more to bo known. . . . The 
fact regarding the higher education is not that the de- 



PROFESSIONAL COURSES 19 

mand creates the supply, but that the supply determines 
the demand. ' ' 

To those who questioned the wisdom of adding to the 
offering of the institution in view of the existing respon- 
sibilities to undergraduate students, he replied that, just 
in proportion as provision is made by any educational 
institution for the wants of students of superior grade, 
in the same proportion its attractiveness is increased for 
those of the inferior grade, 

Barnard had called the period in Columbia's history 
up to 1857 the gymnasial period, that from 1858 to 1880 
the period of the professional school, and that from then 
on the university or graduate period. 

Although, in 1872, Barnard had succeeded in getting 
the trustees to make provision for fellowships, with the 
privilege to the incumbent of studying abroad, he had 
to wait until 1880 for the next important step, the estab- 
lishment of the School of Political Science. Professor 
John W. Burgess had been called, in 1876, to the chair 
of history and political science from Amherst College. 
It had been expected that his work would be made 
available for the students of the Law School, and it was 
the failure of this hope which really brought about the 
establishment of a separate school four years later, with 
Professor Burgess at its head, and four other members 
of the teaching staff, all having been trained in Ger- 
many. At first the number of students drawn from 
outside Columbia College was very small, practically 
limited to disciples of Professor Burgess from Amherst, 
but it was this small beginning which laid the founda- 
tion for the present graduate enrollment of over two 
thousand students. 

One may here contrast the conditions under which 
the School of Political Science was established with the 



20 THE BACKGROUND 

unsuccessful movement of 1858. In the earlier experi- 
ment the lecturers were made dependent upon the fees of 
students, and the lectures were thrown open to the public 
without examination. In the later, instruction was given 
only by teachers on regular salary and only to college- 
bred men. It was, as Professor Munroe Smith has said, 
on this narrower but more solid ground that the Colum- 
bia graduate schools have grown slowly but steadily 
to their present strength. 

The system of graduate instruction was rounded out 
by the establishment at the same time of a so-called 
graduate department, which meant practically that the 
more ambitious professors in other fields than that of 
political science might offer advanced work in addition 
to their stated collegiate duties. Some graduate work 
in pure and applied science had already developed un- 
der the professors in the School of Mines, and, as a mat- 
ter of fact, the degree of doctor of philosophy was first 
conferred at Columbia in that school. 

Barnard was one of the first to observe the develop- 
ment of various callings into new professions and to 
perceive the relation that this fact bears to collegiate 
and university instruction. He foresaw the coming need 
of vocational training and endeavored to make Colum- 
bia ready to meet it. Throughout his presidency, he 
consistently urged the raising of the standards of ad- 
mission to professional study. With the Law School 
he could do little, for Professor Dwight's commanding 
prestige, and indeed certain formal resolutions of the 
trustees, made him practically independent of the presi- 
dent. He did succeed in getting some provision made 
for entrance tests. So far as the course itself went, it 
should be said he was entirely in sympathy with Pro- 
fessor Dwight's plan of organization and referred to 



PROFESSIONAL COURSES 21 

the school as an example of " the most extraordinary- 
success ever achieved in this country or any other. ' ' 

He saw the crying need of improvement in medical 
education, but under the existing arrangement — it will 
be remembered that the College of Physicians and 
Surgeons was at that time educationally and financially 
independent of Columbia — he was powerless to do any- 
thing toward its accomplishment. 

The prompt success of the School of Mines, however, 
was due in no small measure to Barnard's enthusiastic 
support. He was himself a devoted and accomplished 
man of science and the first college president to be a 
member of the National Academy of Sciences. To-day, 
more than twenty years after his death, he still forms 
a link between the University and the Academy, 
through the conditions of award of the Barnard Medal 
for meritorious service to science. He entered eagerly 
into the aspirations of Egleston, Chandler, and Vinton. 
Although before his becoming president the trustees 
had been unwilling to undergo any financial obligations 
for the aid of the new school, he succeeded in persuad- 
ing them to borrow more than $100,000 for the purpose 
and to erect a building for the school to replace the 
abandoned deaf and dumb asylum where, strangely 
enough, he himself had taught a quarter of a century 
before, Barnard was greatly interested in the plan for 
practical instruction in mining, which originated at 
Columbia in 1877, and in the organization of profes- 
sional courses in civil and electrical engineering. It 
was under the School of Mines also that the department 
of architecture came into being. The establishment at 
Columbia of work in architecture was primarily the re- 
sult of the devoted interest of one of the younger 
members of the board of trustees, Mr. F. Augustus 



22 THE BACKGROUND 

Schcrmcrhorn, and it was auspiciously undertaken in 
1881 by the appointment of Professor William R. Ware, 
who had previously founded at the ]\Iassachusetts Insti- 
tute the first American school of architecture. Through- 
out Professor Ware's long career, he emphasized the 
idea that architecture is not simply a craft to be learned 
through apprenticeship, nor a branch of engineering 
to be taught in a scientific school, but an art to be 
taught in an environment primarily artistic. 

One of the resolutions adopted by the trustees in 
1858 looked forward to the establishment of a chair of 
the science and art of education. No appointment, 
however, was made and twenty-three years later Bar- 
nard could say, as he did in 1881, that " Education is 
nowhere treated as a science and nowhere is there an 
attempt to expound its true philosophy. ' ' In his report 
of this year he devoted thirty pages to this topic, ad- 
vocating particularly a chair of the history, theor>% 
and practice of education. " In doing this we should, 
for a third time, have taken a new departure, and a 
step in advance of all our contemporaries and com- 
petitors. We have created the first and only success- 
ful School of Mines upon the continent; and we have 
established the only school in which a young man can 
obtain such a training as may properly fit him for the 
duties of political life. If into a great national indus- 
try which has heretofore been prosecuted by ignorant 
and wasteful methods avc have introduced economy and 
intelligence, and if in a public service which has been 
worse than ignorant and wasteful we have, by the in- 
strumentalities we have created, laid the foundation for 
a coming substantial reform, we have in neither of these 
ways done more to advance the welfare of our own peo- 
ple, or to benefit the world, than we shall have done 



ADMISSION OF WOMEN 23 

when we shall have made it possible that those to whose 
hands is to be entrusted the education of each rising 
generation shall be themselves properly educated to their 
own responsible profession." It was the impression 
made by this report upon the mind of a young under- 
graduate then in Columbia College which brought about, 
a few years later, the organization of Teachers College 
under the presidency of Nicholas Murray Butler. So 
many of Barnard's long cherished desires and hopes 
found no realization until after his death that it is 
pleasant to remember that he was spared to see at least 
the modest beginning of what has grown into the great 
Teachers College of to-day. 

In 1879, Barnard raised with the trustees the ques- 
tion as to whether the advantages of Columbia College 
should not be opened to young women as well as to 
young men. It was a brave utterance at a time when 
the East was thundering against the inexplicable devel- 
opment of collegiate coeducation west of the Alleghany 
Mountains. This was the beginning of a long campaign 
of education for the city of New York, and indeed for 
the whole eastern part of the country. Barnard was 
keen enough to make it clear that, if the opponents of 
the higher education of women proved anything, they 
proved that young women should not be educated at all. 
With his characteristic optimism he wrote : 

" Whatever may be the fate of the present suggestion, 
the undersigned cannot permit himself to doubt that 
the time will yet come when the propriety and wisdom 
of this measure will be fully recognized ; and, as he be- 
lieves that Columbia College is destined in the coming 
centuries to become so comprehensive in the scope of 
her teaching as to be able to furnish to all inquirers 
after truth the instruction they may desire in whatever 
branch of human knowledge, he believes also that she 



24 THE BACKGROUND 

will become so catholic in her liberality as to open widely 
her doors to all inquirers without distinction either of 
class or of sex." 

In his next report he continued the attack, using this 
time the example of Cambridge University in England. 
In 1881, he reminded the trustees that the admission of 
women " being in the direction of manifest destiny, 
to accept it promptly would be a graceful act ; while to 
lag behind the spirit of the age would be only to be 
coerced after all into accepting it at last, ungrace- 
fully." 

The best that Barnard could get from the trustees was 
a resolution, adopted in 1883, " that this Board deem 
it expedient to institute measures for raising the stand- 
ard of female education by proposing courses of study 
to be pursued outside the College, but under the ob- 
servation of its authorities and offering suitable aca- 
demic honors and distinction to any who, on examination, 
shall be found to have pursued such courses of study 
with success." 

It was not very promising; in fact, it has been said 
that the resulting collegiate course for women had more 
than the remoteness of the modern correspondence school, 
without any of its special efficiency. Those who were 
interested were, however, too wise to let slip the advan- 
tage of any hold upon the rapidly expanding institution. 
Although, as Barnard pointed out, the course offered 
no permanent solution to the problem which he had 
raised, it maintained a languishing existence for many 
years. Indeed, when I entered Columbia as a fre.shman, 
in 1894, there was one woman still on the books as a 
candidate for the bachelor's degree. It was finally abol- 
ished in the following year. The real solution of the 
problem was, of course, the establishment of the College 



BARNARD'S PERSONALITY AND MEMORY 25 

which bears Barnard's name, and its definite incorpora- 
tion, more than a decade after his death, into the edu- 
cational system of Columbia University. The story of 
Barnard College will be told in another chapter. 

There is something pathetic in the fact that, during 
the years when Barnard was making history for the 
institution he served, he received very little recognition 
from those about him. Indeed, it was not until after 
his death that his importance was realized. Although 
an impressive man in appearance, his deafness cut him off 
in large degree. He seemed to lack totally the minor 
qualities of administrative efficiency, and during the 
later years of his life the treasurer of the College over- 
shadowed him in matters of administration and the pro- 
fessors dealt directly with their friends among the trus- 
tees, in all university projects, rather than through the 
president. Nor did his impression on the public outside 
seem to be any stronger. During his administration 
only one important gift was made to the College, the 
bequest of an alumnus, Stephen Whitney Phoenix. The 
gift of the Vanderbilt family to the Medical School came 
also during his time, but was a result of the activity 
of the president of the College of Physicians and 
Surgeons, the late Dr. McLane. 

" Barnard possessed, with such men as Gladstone and 
Bismarck (it is a very rare quality), the fervor in 
age that he had in youth. He was as ready as he 
was before he had secured position and fame to take 
up a new idea, a new project, and pursue it with as 
much vigor as if a long life were still before him and 
all his reputation were still before him yet to make." 
The burden of years and infirmities was weighing, 
however, even upon his buoyant spirit, and, although he 
carried on his duties almost to the full fourscore years, 



26 THE BACKGROUND 

the last year or so were certainly full not only of labor 
but of sorrow. The parts of the institution with which 
he was particularly concerned — the graduate work, the 
School of Mines, and the College — had failed to grow as 
he had hoped. Indeed, toward the end he had about 
concluded that it would be advisable to give up the 
struggle of maintaining a first-class undergraduate col- 
lege, under the conditions confronting him in New York 
City. 

He retired from active service at the close of the aca- 
demic year of 1888 and died in the following spring, 
April 27. 

During the closing years of his life Barnard's reputa- 
tion seemed to be that of a very deaf and rather fussy 
old gentleman who never kept copies of his letters, and 
with whom for this and other reasons it was most diffi- 
cult to do business; but as time goes on his figure 
looms higher and higher and he has now a firm place 
in the little group of men without whom education in 
the United States, whatever it might have been, would 
not be what it is to-day. In this group he takes his 
place with Thomas Jefferson, President Wayland of 
Brown, President Eliot of Harvard, and Commissioner 
Harris of the United States Bureau of Education. Bar- 
nard's voice indeed seemed to be that of one crying in 
the wilderness, but there were fortunately some few Avho 
heard and hearkened, most notably the present president 
of Columbia University. 

It was characteristic of Barnard and of his devoted 
wife, who soon followed him, that they should leave their 
entire estate to the college they had loved. This made 
possible the establishment of the Barnard ]Medal, already 
mentioned, and of the Barnard fund for the increase of 
the library, an interest which the limitations of space 



BARNARD'S PERSONALITY AND MEMORY 27 

have made it impossible for me to dwell upon. In 1904, 
in Barnard's honor, the title of the chair held by the 
dean of Teachers College was changed to the Barnard 
Professorship of Education. 

Barnard College was founded and named just before 
his death. May it always maintain the fine spirit of 
devotion and optimism which it now possesses and which 
makes the institution a peculiarly fitting memorial to the 
great president. 




II 

THE UNIVERSITY OF TO-DAY; ITS ORGANIZA- 
TION AND AIMS 

Recent Accomplishments. Previous Uncertainty. The Univer- 
sity Party. Appointment of Seth Low. The New Order and its 
Fruits. Continuity of Policy. Significant Contributions. Growth 
by Treaty. Educational Unity. The University Council. Stand- 
ardization and Progress. College Admission and Advancement. 
Professional Study. The Combined Course. Plan of Organization. 
Trustees. President. Other Officers. Administrative Staff. 

How recently, but how fully, Columbia has come to 
be recognized as worthy of her metropolitan homo may 
be read in the concluding chapter of Dr. E. E. Slos- 
son's *' Great American Universities ": " Two decades 
ago Columbia was a small college with three loosely 
attached professional schools, crowded in old buildings 
downtown, and regarded by the outside world as local, 
sectarian, and unpromising. Now it is metropolitan and 
cosmopolitan, and, if it continues to progress as it has 
in recent years, it is likely to take a position among the 
universities of the country similar to that of New York 
among the cities." That these changes have not come 
about without growing pains, and even more serious 
academic maladies, has been indicated in the introductory 
chapter; that the net results constitute a significant 
chapter in the history of education, not only of the nation 
but of the world, needs no demonstration. 

At Columbia in the late eighties, to quote one 
of the professors then in service, " there existed a 
state of things which is difficult to describe. There 
was no feeling of purpose, no agreement as to 

28 



APPOINTMENT OF SETH LOTf 29 

what was best for the future, no cominon interest in 
what was happening in the present. A prevailing un- 
rest, a clash of opinion, and on every side a belief that 
everything went by chance or perhaps sometimes by 
favor — these were a few of the obstacles to good feeling 
and to harmonious effort. Then came Mr. Low, and or- 
der was evolved from chaos. Kegarding it all in a spirit 
of detachment, which would have been next to impossi- 
ble for anyone else, his fitting and perfect sense of 
justice and fair-mindedness, which is so very rare, 
inspired everyone from the very first with confidence 
and loyalty. It was felt instinctively that the right thing 
would be done, that every interest would be considered, 
and every question viewed without the slightest preju- 
dice, and it was because of this assurance that the trans- 
formation of a small college into a big university was 
effected so smoothly, so completely, and so successfully 
as to render possible the achievement of the present 
splendid promise for its future." 

As a matter of fact, the initial steps toward university 
organization were taken before the election of President 
Low in 1889. A majority, indeed, both of faculty and 
trustees were at that time opposed to change or even to 
growth. The faculty point of view was frankly expressed 
as regards salaries by the wife of one of the older pro- 
fessors to the effect that, if the divisor be increased while 
the dividend remains fixed, the quotient necessarily will 
be diminished. One of the prominent trustees of the pe- 
riod said authoritatively that Columbia never asked aid of 
anybody and was not anxious to receive any, lest it might 
give the donor a claim to interfere with the management 
of its affairs. The center of the university party, as 
it was called, was the small compact faculty of political 
science, with the support o.f Nicholas Murray Butler, 



30 THE UNIVERSITY OF TO-DAY 

then adjunct picfessor, and the warden of the Law 
School, Professor Dwlght. It was this group of men 
tliat persuaded the trustees of the need for establishing 
a faculty of philosophy for advanced work and for a 
central university senate. The initiative for the third 
crucial project, the reorganization of the Law School, 
came from one of the trustees, Mr. Stephen P. Nash. It 
is pathetic to remember that, though Barnard was the 
real spiritual leader of the whole movement, none of the 
detailed steps were taken through him. For him, ex- 
pansion was of supreme interest; problems of organiza- 
tion had little attraction and the progressive professors 
went directly to the progressive trustees with their 
plans. 

The decisive step was indeed !aken in the choice of a 
successor to President Barnard. That step and the other 
fundamental advances toward university organization 
have fortunately been recently described by Professor 
John "W. Burgess, to whom, in President Butler's 
acknowledgment, ** we owe more than to anyone else 
the form of our University, who proposed it more than 
thirty years ago and with patient skill, determination, 
and statesmanship has ever since helped to work it out, 
first in one faculty and then in another." In Professor 
Burgess's " Reminiscences " we read that it was now 
felt by all who comprehended the situation clearly that 
everything hung upon the choice of the new president : 

** On account of the sharp dissensions in the teach- 
ing body, it was not possible to take any member 
of either faculty for the presidency, and it was even 
impracticable to ask the advice of any of them upon this 
all-important question. The trustees were thrown en- 
tirely upon themselves in making their selection. They 
very wisely determined to confer the great office upon 



THE NEW ORDER AND ITS FRUITS 31 

one of their own number and acted just as wisely in 
choosing that one. Mr. Low was not, in the first place, 
a profound scholar, though not lacking in broad learn- 
ing and intellectual sympathy. In this there was great 
advantage, an advantage which Mr. Low himself con- 
sciously appreciated. It was this very thing which 
enabled him to see that each professor could manage 
the internal affairs of his department better than the 
president could do it for him. The professors were quick 
to comprehend the president's estimate of them and to 
manifest, as a consequence of it, a new enthusiasm in 
their work. This alone was a mighty step forward from 
the school to the university. On the other hand, Mr. 
Low was a real man of affairs. He had been partner in 
a great business and mayor of a great city. He was a 
man of high social standing, of extended acquaintance, 
and of large wealth. He knew how to organize and ad- 
minister, how to frame a budget, how to provide ways 
and means, how to take advantage of all the existing 
auxiliaries offered by existing institutions in the great 
city, how to bring the University to the notice of the 
city, the nation, and the world, how to interest men of 
power and wealth in it, and, above all, how to secure for 
the chairs of instruction men of ability and marked 
distinction in their several departments. President Low 
emphasized at all times and on all occasions the propo- 
sition that a great university is, in essence, a body of 
great investigators and teachers. In all of the necessary 
work of organization and amid all of the details of 
administration to which he was compelled by the situa- 
tion to give extraordinary attention, he kept the great 
purpose constantly before him of bringing to Columbia 
such a body of men; and his success, in this respect, 
equaled his determination. The careful and wise selec- 
tions which he advised and procured in strengthening 
and recruiting the existing faculties and in contributing 
new faculties gave to the University that strong scien- 
tific groundwork upon which it has since then so securely 
rested. These were all great qualities, qualities abso- 
lutely necessary for the development of Columbia at 
that stage of its history. ' ' 



32 THE UNIVERSITY OF TO-DAY 

The three long conferences about university organi- 
zation following Mr. Low's taking up his work, were 
held in the old President's House on Forty-ninth Street. 
The party of progress, though in a strong minority, was 
well organized, and divided among its members the dif- 
ferent aspects of the problem to be brought forward. It 
had, furthermore, the intelligence not to press forward 
too rapidly. As a result, this party won a complete vic- 
tory and placed an impress on the organization of the 
institution which is still clearly borne. 

The first outward and visible sign of the new order 
of things was a provision that students should matricu- 
late simply in the University, paying a single fee, and 
that thereafter they should enjoy the facilities offered by 
every faculty. In Mr. Low's phrase, Columbia at one 
stroke ceased to be divided into fragments and took upon 
herself the aspect of a university, where each depart- 
ment was related to the other and every one strengthened 
all. In this and other ways an elasticity was given to 
the organization which it had previously lacked almost 
wholly, and this fact had its share in the infusion of a 
spirit of buoyancy and a sense of team play. No one can 
read the records of twenty years ago without getting a 
realizing sense that the old institution had at last found 
herself and was a living entity. In particular, an ar- 
ticle written by Professor Brander Matthews in Har- 
per's Weekly during 1892 gives a fine picture of the 
spirit of enthusiastic optimism in which Columbia was 
preparing herself for the great advances she was about 
to make. 

The teaching staff was strengthened to an amazing 
degree, both qualitatively and quantitatively. It does 
not detract from the credit due to ]\Ir. Low to point out 
that in this respect he had an extraordinary opportunity. 




Columbia at Fokty-nixtii Street 



CONTINUITY OF POLICY 33 

In the first place, the income had been considerably in- 
creased through the expiration of leases and their re- 
newal at an increased rental. When the trustees were 
in doubt as to the propriety of applying University funds 
to some new fields, it should be added, Mr. Low, in not 
a few instances, supplied the funds from his own pocket 
until the experiment was a proved success. Secondly, 
Columbia was at the moment almost alone in the mar- 
ket. There was no similar period of growth elsewhere 
in the eastern United States, and the State universities 
were not yet the successful bidders for men of perform- 
ance and promise that they have since become. Last but 
not least, the home ranks were not filled with juniors 
of respectable but not brilliant attainments, who would, 
if they had been on hand, in all probability have stepped 
into the new places. 

As a result of all these facts, but most of all as a 
result of the admirable judgment of Mr. Low and his 
advisers, a group of men was called to Columbia during 
his administration, which, in addition to the men already 
in service, did more than the administrative and educa- 
tional reorganization, or the new buildings, to bring 
Columbia into the front rank of American universities. 
Time has removed all but five of the professors of Bar- 
nard's day from teaching service, and the men appointed 
under Low form the backbone of the University. 

The academic world at large soon came to know of the 
new order of things by its fruits, — groups of young doc- 
tors of philosophy who are to-day in positions of leader- 
ship all over the country, and scholarly publications of 
importance in many different fields from both teachers 
and advanced students. 

The eleven years of Mr. Low's presidency witnessed 
in all its many steps one of the most remarkable 



34 THE UNIVERSITY OF TO-DAY 

changes in physical habitat in the history of any insti- 
tution of learning. The important influence of this 
physical change upon the educational prestige of the 
University need not be emphasized. In all this move- 
ment the president not only gave the most devoted at- 
tention to every complex detail of removal and con- 
struction, but he was the leader in the campaign for 
that outside assistance which made the plan possible. 
Finally, he crowned his service by the gift of a magnifi- 
cent library building as a memorial to his father, Abiel 
Abbot Low. This building has taken its place among 
the small group of examples of really great architecture 
in America. 

From the day when Mr. Low found himself firmly in 
the saddle until the present, there has been no sharp 
break in the development of the institution such as came 
with his election, not even at the time of his retirement 
in 1901 to become mayor of New York City, and the 
election of Professor Butler as his successor. New ele- 
ments have indeed entered; older ones have developed, 
or perhaps in some cases regressed, but the stamp was 
set at that time and has not been changed in any funda- 
mental particular. The distinction has been made that 
President Low brought a group of loosely organized 
schools into administrative unity ; and that it was Presi- 
dent Butler's task to bring them into educational 
unity; and it would of course be possible to point to 
contrasts in emphasis and interpretation, such as would 
naturally arise from the differences between two vigor- 
ous and strongly marked personalities. The differences, 
however, are less significant than the essential unity of 
the two administrations. Unlike Presidents King and 
Barnard, both men were graduates of Columbia College, 
from the classes of 1870 and 1882 respectively, both led 



GROWTH BY TREATY 35 

in study and undergraduate life, as they did afterward 
as alumni. Even before 1890, the younger man was a 
leader in the university party, and he was President 
Low's right-hand man and trusted adviser, particularly 
in matters having to do with educational theory and 
practice. The ideals and the accomplishments of both 
men may be summed up in the eloquent words of Dr. 
Butler's oath of office, taken on April 12, 1902: 

"•To preserve, protect, and foster this ancient col- 
lege, established for the education and instruction of 
youth in the liberal arts and sciences; to maintain, 
strengthen, and uphold this noble university; to obey 
its statutes; to labor unweariedly for its advantage and 
for the accomplishment of its high ideals; to promote 
its efficiency in every part, that it may widen the 
boundaries and extend the application of human knowl- 
edge and contribute increasingly to the honor and wel- 
fare of the city, state, and nation — I pledge my strength 
and whatever abilities God has given me. By His help 
I will." 

Neither president would wish to regard the happen- 
ings of his administration as primarily personal achieve- 
ment. " Anyone," as Dr. Butler has said, " who writes 
the history of universities in the terms of the personal 
characteristics or the accredited achievements of their 
presidents falls far short of the real truth. The incum- 
bency of a university president is like the reign of a 
monarch or the rule of a president, convenient as a 
standard of measurement, but it is the men of letters, 
the men of science, the men of vision, the men of ac- 
complishment who are remembered in that administra- 
tion, who give to it meaning and form. Just so we 
remember Shakspere, but we have to turn to the encyclo- 
pedia to find in whose reign he lived. ' ' 



36 THE UNIVERSITY OF TO-DAY 

As a result of the essential unity of administration, a 
minute chronological record of the developments since 
1890 is not necessary to obtain an understanding of the 
present organization and equipment of the University, 
nor of its significant contributions to the problems of 
higher education. Before giving what at the best must 
be a very incomplete description of so complex an or- 
ganism as Columbia has now become, it may be well 
to summarize these contributions. 

In the first place, Columbia has achieved a much closer 
interrelation between its different parts than is the case 
in most of the great universities of the world. This has 
resulted not only in saving useless and wasteful dupli- 
cation, but it has served to bring to each of its many 
interests the stimulus and helpful criticism of all the 
others. Perhaps the most fundamental devices for bring- 
ing about this unity are the central academic senate, 
known as the University Council, and a type of depart- 
mental organization which cuts across school and fac- 
ulty lines. In the second place, there has been a con- 
scious effort on the part of the University to get the 
most from the community at large and in return to give 
the most possible to it. It has been its constant aim to 
develop those powers and opportunities that depend 
upon mutual co-operation, and no institution in the 
country has advanced so far as has Columbia along the 
lines of what has been called the policy of growth by 
treaty with other independent institutions. This policy 
has the great advantage of preserving the initiative and 
devotion which come from a sense of independence on 
the part of the smaller organization and at the same 
time conserving a general unity of aim and economy 
of effort in solving the problems of the community. 

In the third place, Columbia has given particular 



EDUCATIONAL UNITY 37 

attention to the relation between collegiate and profes- 
sional courses with a view to ensuring an adequately 
high standard of preparation for professional study with- 
out undue waste of time and energy on the part of the 
student. The so-called combined course, which permits 
the undergraduate student to begin professional study 
before receiving the bachelor 's degree and to offer toward 
that degree one or, in some cases, two years of profes- 
sional school work, a plan now in operation directly or 
indirectly in every university of the country, was de- 
vised and tried out first at Columbia. 

In the fourth place, particular attention has been given 
to what is now becoming known in industrial organi- 
zations as functional administration. The essence of this 
policy is the centering of responsibility for carrying out 
any adopted policy upon carefully selected individu- 
als, who are expected to make themselves experts in 
their particular field. This policy has come rather late 
into university administration, but it is now throughout 
the country rapidly supplanting the earlier policy of 
administration by faculty committee. 

In student registration Columbia has grown from 
1,768 in 1889 to 9,379 in 1913. Thirty-one per cent, of 
the latter figure is made up from registration in institu- 
tions which have since 1889 joined the University system 
without losing their own independence and identity. Not 
a few of the other students also, particularly those in 
the graduate schools, have been attracted to the Uni- 
versity by the opportunities which its alliance with the 
several museums and other scientific organizations of the 
city have thrown open to them. 

The definite absorption of the hitherto independent 
College of Physicians and Surgeons, in 1891, was fol- 



38 THE UNIVERSITY OF TO-DAY 

lowed by the incorporation into the University educa- 
tional system of Barnard College and Teachers College, 
the Vanderbilt Clinic and Sloane Hospital, and by alli- 
ances for the common good with seven theological semi- 
naries, with the New York Botanical Gardens, the Met- 
ropolitan Museum of Art, Cooper Union, the American 
Museum of Natural History, the Zoological Park and 
Aquarium — a record probably without parallel. 

The New York College of Pharmacy, under the fol- 
lowing administration, was also taken into the educa- 
tional system of the University. A close alliance has 
been formed with the New York School of Philanthropy, 
and a reciprocal agreement of great importance to the 
future of medical education has been arranged between 
the University and the Presbyterian Hospital. Finally, 
international agreements as to visiting professors 
have been made with Gennany, Holland, France, and 
Austria. 

The most significant of these relations and those touch- 
ing the university life most closely are the ones with 
Barnard College and Teachers College. The identifica- 
tion of the former with the University is completer, both 
because Barnard grew up under the wing of Columbia 
and because of the identity of interest within university 
departments, but in each case the alliance is close 
and contains elements of first importance in our uni- 
versity life. Previous to 1900 Barnard had been under 
patronage rather than in alliance, and the agreement of 
1893 with Teachers College had been neither close enough 
nor organic enough to accomplish its purpose. Indeed, 
neither institution appeared at all in the Columbia cata- 
logue until 1897. Their present relations date from 
1900, the agreements of that year having since been 
amended only in detail. These provide that the presi- 



THE UNIVERSITY COUNCIL 39 

dent of the University shall be, ex officio, president of 
each. He presides at faculty meetings and has general 
supervision and direction of their educational adminis- 
tration, as is the case with the other schools of the 
University. The internal administration of each is con- 
ducted by the dean, appointed by the president, by and 
with the advice and consent of the trustees of the inde- 
pendent College, which during the life of the agree- 
ment waives the right to confer degrees. The students 
share in all general University privileges, as for example 
in the use of the library, and the faculties share in the 
general academic responsibility and control through their 
representatives upon the University Council, 

Strengthening the letter of these alliances is the bond 
of a community of interest, which furnishes frequent 
examples of what are unofficially known as academic 
intermarriages. For example, twenty-eight members of 
the Barnard College faculty sit also in other faculties 
of the University, ten men whose salaries are paid by 
Teachers College are in the faculty of philosophy, three 
in that of pure science, and two in political science. 
Between the University faculty and the seminaries, 
museums, and so forth, there are a dozen examples of 
such personal alliances. 

What is gained and what is lost by agreements of this 
character? To speak first of the latter, it must be con- 
fessed that co-operation does not always work. Yale and 
Columbia have failed to do what they had hoped for 
the consular service, and thus far the agreement with the 
National Academy of Design appears to have accom- 
plished less than nothing. An inevitable tension, fur- 
thermore, comes at times with separate financial re- 
sponsibility, and the relations between two of the smaller 
independent corporations are not always made easier 



40 THE UNIVERSITY OF TO-DAY 

by their common relation to the University Corporation. 
There is, undoubtedly, a monetary loss to the latter 
from the alliances, because so many overhead charges 
are borne by it alone and the balance of educational 
trade is, from a financial point of view, practically 
always against it. There are those who say, furthermore, 
on the principle of the more fishers around the pond, 
the fewer fish for each, that many of the splendid gifts 
that have come to the other corporations would have 
otherwise fallen directly into the University coffers. Even 
if this latter were true, which may be doubted, the gen- 
eral advantages of the policy far outweigh its draw- 
backs. The clear-cut needs and independent initiative 
of the smaller independent corporations make appeal 
for aid more vivid and usually more successful. It is 
easier, in a word, to get something in particular than 
something in general. Since the University makes no 
attempt to dominate, and neither patronizes nor pau- 
perizes, there is a general spirit of co-operation in 
all the parts of the complex organism. The wealth of 
opportunity to the student in every part is immensely 
increased. To give but a single example, the catalogue 
will show how greatly the program of the University de- 
partment of history is strengthened by professors of 
church history from Union Theological Seminary who sit 
in the faculty of political science. 

It is almost too early to speak of the relations which 
bring visiting professors to us from across the Atlantic, 
but there is no doubt as to the profound significance of 
the movement. I\Iy personal hope is that the future will 
bring closer relations, and in particular more academic 
exchanges, among the colleges and universities of the 
United States, a subject to which I shall return in the 
concluding chapter of this book. The success of the 



THE UNIVERSITY COUNCIL 41 

Columbia policy of increase of opportunities by treaty 
seems to point the way logically to such a development. 

President Low's first task was to create a center for 
the academic mass, for he did not feel that the uni- 
versity, like Pascal's definition of the universe, could be 
a sphere with its center everywhere and its surface no- 
where. Professor Burgess had long advocated an aca- 
demic senate, and the trustees had authorized one be- 
fore Mr. Low's election. It was, when organized in 
1900, hardly more than a president's advisory commit- 
tee, with special interest in the organization of graduate 
work, but it fulfilled the one essential condition in that 
it was felt to be and was accepted by both trustees and 
professors as thoroughly and fairly representative of 
the entire institution. Two years later, definite admin- 
istrative and legislative powers were assigned to the 
Council and the University Bulletin reported in 1892 
that it * * has now become a legislative body for the whole 
institution, subject only to the confirmation of the trus- 
tees as to certain matters. The teaching force itself 
is now for the first time in a position to shape the edu- 
cational policy of the University in all its parts. Colum- 
bia is thus nearing the practice of the great European 
universities." As a matter of fact, it was for some 
years little more than an upper house for the non- 
professional faculties. Under the revision of the Uni- 
versity statutes in 1908, which marked the logical com- 
pletion of the process begun in 1890, the Council was 
reorganized, its constitutional powers greatly enlarged, 
and its membership increased, the representatives elected 
from the several faculties, however, still being in the 
majority. The routine matters, practically all relating to 
graduate instruction and the appointment of fellows, 



42 THE UNIVERSITY OF TO-DAY 

which were formerly debated in the Council as a whole, 
are now cared for in an executive committee. The Coun- 
cil can thus devote adequate attention to those broader 
questions which concern the entire University. By stat- 
ute it is directed to secure the correlation of courses with 
a view to increasing the efficiency and enlarging the 
range of university work, to encourage original research, 
and to adjust all questions involving more than one 
faculty; and also to make recommendations, both to the 
trustees and to the several faculties, concerning the edu- 
cational administration of the University, and to advise 
the president upon such matters as he may bring be- 
fore it. 

The body has been called, by one of my colleagues 
(not an engineer), the mainspring and flywheel of the 
institution, and it is indeed the point of articulation in 
educational matters between the representative govern- 
ment of the faculties and the centralized administrative 
organization. Like many another constitutional body 
of essential importance, its actual proceedings seem fre- 
quently to be trivial and dull, but its influence lies 
not so much in what it actually does as in what it could 
do should occasion arise. 

A searching of the University heart took place in 
1908-09, under the probe of a committee appointed by 
the University Council at the request of the trustees, 
to consider possible changes in the requirements for 
admission and the conditions of graduation in the vari- 
ous professional schools, and to report, also, as to whether 
any elective or optional courses offered to the students 
might be discontinued without disadvantage to the gen- 
eral educational interests of the University. The com- 
mittee took its duties very seriously and made a close 
study of the conditions throughout the University, and 



STANDARDIZATION AND PROGRESS 43 

particularly in the Schools of Law and Medicine, and the 
Graduate Schools. As frequently happens in such cases, 
the real value of the work, which was very great, lay 
not so much in the formal report to the University 
Council, which is rather a vague document, but in the 
fact that the investigation had been made in such a way 
as to aifect the judgment not only of its own members, 
but also of all the more serious members of the academic 
community. In this way its effect upon the public opin- 
ion of the University was very strong and is still felt. 

Those parts of the University — such as the Summer 
Session, Extension Teaching, Journalism, and Agricul- 
ture — which are not under the control of some particu- 
lar faculty, are under the special care of the Council. 
Its responsibility is also great in the case of the relations 
between the University Corporation and its treaty allies. 
To quote Professor Munroe Smith : " In the whole pro- 
cess of expansion by treaty, the University Council has 
proved itself an instrument of great value. ... It is not 
too much to affirm that it is the Council, itself a new 
thing in university government, that has made educa- 
tional federations of this new type possible, and to assert 
that this representative council will so largely insure 
the satisfactory workings of these federations as to make 
them permanent." 

For the future the Council seems destined to give 
more and more study to the rapidly disappearing fron- 
tiers that were once so clearly marked between the sev- 
eral departments of knowledge, and to new groupings of 
subjects needed to meet new public demands constantly 
arising. 

The maintenance of what we regard to-day as ade- 
quate standards of admission, advancement, and gradua- 



44 THE UNIVERSITY OF TO-DAY 

tion is a comparatively recent matter in America, and 
this is particularly true as regards professional study. 
The first entrance requirements for the School of Mines 
were limited to elementary algebra, geometry, and trigo- 
nometry. It was not until 1875 that there were any 
entrance examinations at all for the Law School. The 
entire course in medicine was not so long ago of but four 
months, and as late as 1888 its entrance standards were 
advanced to the requirement of elementary English, 
Latin, and mathematics. Those in the Law School did 
not reach the basis of high-school graduation until 
1893. 

The amount of time devoted to academic work was un- 
til a few years ago very modest. Professor Burgess, when 
he came to Columbia in 1876, found that " the School 
of Arts made the decided impression of a day school for 
the sons of residents of New York who came rather 
irregularly to the exercises at about ten o'clock in the 
morning, attended recitations until about one, and then 
went home again. "What they did in the way of study 
during the afternoons and evenings was not very appar- 
ent in their recitations of the following day, and, as 
most of them lived with their parents, it would have 
probably been regarded as an impertinence on the part 
of their teachers to have inquired more nearly into this 
subject." 

Until recently, Saturday was a dies non in the 
academic calendar. In 1892, the beginning of the day's 
work was moved forward to half-past nine, and in 
1907 to nine o'clock. To-day certain classes begin at 
eight o'clock, and in the Summer Session this is re- 
garded as rather a desirable hour. Work now continues 
until ten o'clock at night, winter and summer. The es- 
tablishment of summer and extension courses and the 



COLLEGE ADMISSION AND ADVANCEMENT 45 

fact that the half year is now the unit of administra- 
tion and that the student may profitably enter in Febru- 
ary as well as in September, have added to the actual 
opportunities which Columbia affords no less than have 
the increases in staff and equipment. 

Perhaps the best points at which to study the stand- 
ards of an American university are the relations be- 
tween its college and the secondary schools and between 
its professional and advanced work and its college. It 
must be emphasized at the outset that standards may be 
unreasonably high as well as unreasonably low. As 
Dr. Slosson has pointed out, " some one young man or 
woman is better worth educating than a thousand oth- 
ers, but until the psychologists have become successful 
enough to tell us in advance which this young man or 
woman is, it is best to throw out a reasonably wide net 
with a fine mesh." It must also be remembered that 
the problem is greatly complicated by what is gener- 
ally recognized as the unfortunate fact that for the 
American student of normal ability about two precious 
years have already been wasted in the elementary school 
period. 

The present Columbia standards for entrance may be 
broadly summarized as follows: Admission to the col- 
legiate courses, Columbia College for men and Barnard 
College for women, is so administered as to permit the 
entrance of any worthy student who can show, by ex- 
amination, the preparation of a good secondary school 
course or its equivalent. Once admitted, the quality of 
the work of a college student, quite as much as its 
quantity, is considered in advancing for graduation, and 
under the operation of the present rules many students 
graduate in three or three and a half years. Entrance 



46 THE UNIVERSITY OF TO-DAY 

upon professional study is based upon more than a 
secondary school training, but is not unduly delayed by 
demanding a four-year college course as a prerequisite. 

The capable student should be able to complete 
the requirements, both for the bachelor's degree and 
for any professional degree, in six years. Courses 
of higher instruction and research are supposed to be and 
in general are open only to those who have had a col- 
lege degree or its equivalent, including special prepara- 
tion for advanced work in the major subject. 

Columbia has been one of the few American institu- 
tions to adhere to the plan of requiring entrance exami- 
nations for admission to college. "Without going into 
a discussion as to the relative merits of the certificate and 
examination system, it may be pointed out that the more 
or less satisfactory w^orking of the certificate system, in 
the Eastern colleges at any rate, m'ay well be very largely- 
due to the fact that certain important institutions still 
maintain the old examination method and that the class- 
room work in the school must provide for their training 
and testing as well as for that of the students who enter 
college by certificate. For nearly twenty years the Uni- 
versity has been endeavoring to render the examination 
system as effective as possible. The first move towards 
uniformity of entrance tests was made under her leader- 
ship in 1896. Five years later Columbia was instru- 
mental in the organization of the College Entrance Ex- 
amination Board, which is a co-operative effort on the 
part of colleges and schools to prepare papers, conduct 
examinations, and grade the results in the best manner 
possible. The number of students using its examinations 
has grown from less than one thousand in 1901 to more 
than four thousand in 1913. A further fundamental 
step was taken in 1909 when the imdergraduate admis- 



PROFESSIONAL STUDY 47 

sions committees throughout the University were com- 
bined and an officer of professorial standing was ap- 
pointed to take charge of the whole matter. Under his 
leadership the results of the entrance examinations are 
studied in the light of whatever else it is possible to find 
out about each candidate, through personal acquaintance 
and particularly through reports from his school teach- 
ers as to the details of his preparation, his general 
intelligence, maturity, and reliability. 

The careful personal consideration of each case which 
it is possible for the chairman of the committee on 
admissions to give is cumulative in its effect from year 
to year, and is, it is believed, steadily building up an 
attitude of confidence on the part of schools and parents. 
As a result, the committee is obtaining a kind of infor- 
mation about candidates for admission which it would 
be extremely difficult to elicit by any type of formal 
examination. 

Within the undergraduate colleges the last decade 
has witnessed not only a steady advance in the stated 
academic requirements, but, what is always more im- 
portant, a greater thoroughness in their administration. 
As has not infrequently been the case in rapidly-growing 
institutions, the question of efficiency in teaching had not 
until recently received due attention, but at present this 
matter is receiving careful scrutiny. Five years ago the 
college examinations were centralized, and they are now 
managed more uniformly and efficiently than was pos- 
sible under varying professorial standards. Side by 
side with this greater thoroughness has come also 
greater individual attention to and knowledge of each 
student, so that, although Columbia must admit to what 
the cynic has called a policy of justice tampered with 
mercy it is believed that the tampering is accomplishing 



48 THE UNIVERSITY OF TO-DAY 

good rather than harm. The Columbia College An- 
nouncement contains the following paragraph: " In the 
administration of the college regulations, it is the policy 
of the committee on instruction and of the dean to be 
guided in the treatment of individual cases largely upon 
the recommendation of the adviser, and by the general 
attitude of the student in question toward the College, 
i.e., whether or not he has proved himself a creditable 
member of the college community, as shown by regu- 
larity in attendance, promptness in the fulfillment of 
his obligations, earnestness in his endeavor to profit by 
his college opportunities, both direct and indirect, and 
considerateness of others." 

The second crucial point in the maintenance of aca- 
demic standards is the question of admission to profes- 
sional and advanced studies and particularly the rela- 
tions between the college and the professional school. 
The incidental suggestion in President Butler's first 
annual report of 1902, that the degree of bachelor of 
arts might well be awarded after two years of college 
study, created so much alarm in the academic com- 
munity and so much derision in the public press that 
for a time little attention was paid to his really impor- 
tant study of this double question of the length of the 
college course and the best preparation for professional 
study. What Dr. Butler had primarily at heart was 
the preservation of the American college, which he 
feared would disappear, as it has in Germany, between 
the upgrowing secondary schools and the downgrowing 
professional schools; he feared also that the profes- 
sional schools would either rest upon too low a basis of 
preparatory training or be exalted to an artificially high 
position. In his judgment the earlier part of the pro- 



■-S \ \ I 




THE COMBINED COURSE 49 

fessional courses in law, medicine, engineering, and the 
like are most excellent material for the boy of nine- 
teen or twenty. For him to postpone his professional 
course later than this is not only to waste his time, but 
to waste his mind, which is far worse. It was Leonardo 
da Vinci who said that just as food eaten without appe- 
tite is a tedious nourishment, so does study without 
zeal damage the memory by not assimilating what it 
absorbs. 

The president felt that the combined course was not the 
best solution of the problem and that a uniform collegiate 
course of three years (which, by the way, was suggested 
as early as 1857 and apparently favored by Professors 
Anthon and Lieber) would prove to be only a tempo- 
rary device. Personally, he saw no objection to grant- 
ing the bachelor's degree after two years upon what 
was at least the equivalent of the accomplishment de- 
manded for that degree in 1860. He made no effort, 
however, to impose his individual preferences upon his 
colleagues, whose opinions upon all the questions in- 
volved were obtained and carefully collated by Pro- 
fessor Munroe Smith. His admirable summary may be 
found in the Columbia University Quarterly for March, 
1903, by any who care to look more fully into this whole 
matter. The proposal to award the bachelor's degree 
upon the completion of a two-year course was disap- 
proved by ninety per cent, of the teaching force, and 
no change was made in the time requirements for the 
degree, this particular question being left to the indi- 
vidual student, who has solved it presumably to his 
individual satisfaction. Of the graduates of 1913 in 
Columbia College, eighteen students graduated in three 
years, twenty-one in more than three but less than four. 
A dozen took more than four years. 



50 THE UNIVERSITY OF TO-DAY 

In the spring of 1904, the University Council recom- 
mended that the combined courses be not only retained, 
but should be developed so that, after the completion 
of a two-year collegiate program, the candidate for 
the first degree should be permitted to complete the re- 
quirements for that degree by work in any professional 
school except the School of Law, where the requirement 
was already three years. 

This idea of telescoping the college into the uni- 
versity, as President Hadley has called it, was a dis- 
tinctly Columbia product, and indeed was for many 
years known as the Columbia plan. We find the fore- 
runner of the combined course in the splitting up of the 
senior year into three programs in 1857, although 
the experiment was tried for but three years at that 
time. It is due to Professor Burgess that the idea was 
kept to the fore during the eighties, and ]\Ir. Low made 
it an essential part of his policy that the senior year of 
the college should be made the point of contact between 
the college and the university. So far as professional 
study goes, it was first used in connection with the School 
of Law in 1891. In 1896-97, eleven college seniors had 
elected professional options, as they are called, as fol- 
lows : Law six. Engineering two, Architecture two, Medi- 
cine one. In 1912-13, seventy-eight students in Colum- 
bia College were pursuing professional options, as fol- 
lows: Law forty, Medicine fifteen, IMines, Engineering, 
and Chemistry seven, Architecture five, Journalism four, 
Teachers College seven. The opportunities open to 
women to pursue combined collegiate and professional 
courses are developing slowly, and in Journalism at least 
seem to be upon a satisfactory basis. There is still much 
to be accomplished, however, in this direction. 

The logical mind of Professor I\Iunroe Smith saw that 



THE COMBINED COUKSE 51 

the student who spent two or three years in some other 
college and then came to Columbia for professional work 
would cover the same ground as the men in the com- 
bined course here, but would have no bachelor's degree 
to show for it. The suggestion was made that Colum- 
bia confer the degree after four years' combined resi- 
dence, but great consternation was aroused thereby 
among the alumni of the College, who felt that its iden- 
tity would be thus threatened. In some cases, fortu- 
nately they are growing in number, the college first 
attended has given its student a leave of absence to 
pursue professional studies at Columbia after three 
years of residence, and has graduated him with his class 
upon the certificate of Columbia that his professional 
work had been satisfactorily accomplished. 

It is perhaps characteristic of Columbia 's lack of bind- 
ing uniformity that, in spite of the general acceptance 
of the principle of the combined course, three of the 
schools most recently taken into the University fold re- 
quire no preliminary college residence of candidates 
for the professional degree — Pharmacy, Journalism, and 
Household and Industrial Arts. On the other hand, the 
Engineering School and the School of Education are 
planning, like the Graduate Faculty, to require a bach- 
elor's degree or its equivalent as a basis for admission. 
Through the encouragement of collegiate preparation in 
the former eases and provision for college graduation in 
three years in the latter, the normal period of collegiate 
and professional or graduate residence remains, how- 
ever, six years throughout the institution. 

To understand the organization of the University one 
must first grasp the rather confusing fact that the name 
Columbia University is used in three different senses. 



52 THE UNIVERSITY OF TO-DAY 

Technically it refers only to the original corporation, 
the direct descendant of King's College of the eight- 
eenth century. Until 1912 the legal title was Columbia 
College. In another sense it includes also the inde- 
pendent corporations of Barnard College, Teachers 
College, and the New York College of Pharmacy, and 
in the broadest sense it includes also certain activi- 
ties closely identified with its educational life, as for 
example the University Press, but not directly under 
the control of any one of the four boards of 
trustees. 

The written law of the University is very brief, com- 
prising less than forty pages of statute. Owing largely 
to the fact that so many of the parts enjoyed an inde- 
pendent existence before coming into the system, the 
actual machinery is pretty complex, and there are not 
a few theoretical inconsistencies — not a bad thing, by 
the way, for it has made possible local experiments, 
notably in the ingenious and resourceful Teachers Col- 
lege, which have later been successfully adopted through- 
out the institution. There is, nevertheless, an essential 
unity which can be grasped when one remembers that 
what may be called the pattern of organization is not 
single but triple, each part working from the trustees 
through the president, in one ease into the several ad- 
ministrative offices, in another into the several divisions 
and departments of instruction, and in the third through 
the council to the faculties and administrative boards. 
Speaking broadly, constructive educational matters work 
upward along these ladders to the trustees, while finan- 
cial control operates downward. 

President Butler recently stated before the Royal 
Commission on University Education in London that 
perTiaps the most important and characteristic contri- 



THE COMBINED COURSE 53 

bution of the United States to education is the re- 
sponsible part played by the trustees of its colleges 
and universities. It depends upon the particular board 
of trustees one has in mind and particularly upon 
whether they have grasped the fundamental principles 
behind government and administration, whether one 
agrees with President Butler or with those who are 
inclined rather to the belief, not infrequently expressed, 
that it is only when the trustees are idle figure-heads 
that they are not a source of danger to the institution. 
This question will be considered in greater detail in the 
concluding chapter. 

At any rate, the fact that practically all the trustees 
live in the city of New York makes it possible for the 
different Columbia boards to hold more frequent meet- 
ings and in general to be in closer touch with the insti- 
tution than is ordinarily the case. The initiation and 
careful preparation of reports and resolutions in the 
important standing committees before their considera- 
tion by the board at large is another characteristic fea- 
ture. The most important of these committees concern 
themselves with finance, education, and the buildings and 
grounds. The provision that at least one member must 
retire each year keeps them from degenerating into " in- 
ner rings." 

Columbia is fortunate in the fact that the trustees, 
while taking the initiative themselves in matters of 
finance and building construction, have by statute 
left the initiative in educational matters to the 
president and faculties. As elsewhere, their re- 
sponsibility and authority are final and no educational 
policy can go into effect without their approval. As a 
matter of routine in minor affairs, this approval is in- 
direct. The minutes of all faculties are laid before 



54 THE UNIVERSITY OF TO-DAY 

the board at the monthly meetings and, if no adverse 
action is taken, the recommendations of such faculties 
are regarded as having been approved. In important 
educational matters, however, the part of the trustees 
is the reverse of perfunctory. The amount of labor 
which the formulation of the annual budget alone lays 
upon the members of the committee on education will be 
shown in a later chapter, and in general it is, so far as I 
know, only in the case of the president and fellows of 
Harvard that the same degree of painstaking devotion is 
given to problems of university policy as they arise, and 
that there is such a close and effective co-operation with 
the academic staff in shaping the policies of the institu- 
tion. 

In their number, the twenty-four trustees represent a 
wide divergence in interest and point of view. One of 
the present board, for example, was elected four years 
after his graduation from college. Another was chosen 
fifty-eight years after he had graduated as valedictorian 
of the class of 1848. 

The trustees of the original corporation are nearly all of 
them alumni, six of the number by recent agreement 
being nominated by the organized alumni as vacancies 
occur, each to ser\'e for a period of six years. Other 
members are what are called traditional appointments — 
the Episcopal bishop of the diocese, the rector of Trin- 
ity Church, and one or two representative members of 
other denominations. The number of graduates upon 
the boards of Barnard and Teachers College is natu- 
rally much smaller, owing to the comparative youth of 
these corporations, but this does not seem to affect the 
devotion of the members nor the value of their serv- 
ices. In the same connection it may be observed that 
in the older board the traditional appointees, also less 



PRESIDENT 55 

likely to be alumni, have always included some of its 
most influential members. 

At Columbia, as elsewhere among American universi- 
ties, the president is at the center of the whole complex 
scheme of things ; he is like a telephone ** central," bind- 
ing together trustees, faculty, students, alumni, and the 
general public. At Columbia, the president is not the 
chairman of the board of trustees, nor is he ex officio a 
member. As specified in the statutes, his powers and 
duties are as follows: 

** The President shall have charge of the educational 
administration of the University, and shall be Chairman 
of the University Council, and of every Faculty estab- 
lished by the Trustees. His concurrence shall be nec- 
essary to every act of the Council or of a Faculty ; un- 
less, after his non-concurrence, the act or resolution shall 
be again passed by a vote of two-thirds of the entire 
body." 

He is also charged with the duties of general over- 
sight of the physical equipment of the institution, of 
calling and presiding over the meetings of the council 
and faculties, of making an annual report, of admin- 
istering discipline or directing the deans to do so, of 
arranging for leaves of absence, and finally of confer- 
ring degrees when the requirements of the statutes have 
been fulfilled. 

Actually his most important and most onerous task 
— characteristically not even mentioned in the statutes — 
is the preparation of a budget which controls the annual 
expenditures of the institution in all its myriad parts. 
Promotion would be an idle honor, if unaccompanied 
by a change in the budget, and perhaps mainly for this 



56 THE UNIVERSITY OF TO-DAY 

reason budget preparation entails not only the most care- 
ful personal consideration and labor in minute details, 
and later protracted sittings with trustees' committees, 
but countless conferences with individual members of 
the University. All this must, under the present system, 
be done by a man who has to attend each year more 
than two hundred stated meetings of boards, faculties, 
and committees, to know what is happening education- 
ally not only here but elsewhere, to inspire people to 
give money, to make numberless speeches, and other- 
wise submit to the duties and impositions of represent- 
ing the University before the public. 

President Butler once described the duties of his posi- 
tion by comparing it, in terms of English political life, 
to a prime minister holding two portfolios: " He is 
prime minister in that he is ultimately responsible for 
the policies of the administration, the consultant, the 
adviser, and the friend of every person charged with an 
academic duty. He holds the portfolio of foreign af- 
fairs in that it is his function to look personally after 
the external relations of the University, its relations 
to the surrounding public, to other universities, and to 
the affairs of the country at large. He holds the port- 
folio of chancellor of the exchequer in that, if more 
expenditure is demanded than the stated income will 
provide, he has to find the additional income needed. 
And up to date he has not been constitutionally em- 
powered to levy a tax collectable by ordinary legal 
methods! " He went on to say that the president lived 
almost exclusively in the future. "With the work of the 
current year he has no contact and but little concern, 
save with specific problems which are brought to him 
for consultation or advice. He hoars nothing of the 
current work until he reads the records or the news- 



ADMINISTRATIVE STAFF 57 

papers, and, if he trusts the latter, he hears little that 
is true of what is going on. 

As to whether the position of the American university- 
president among his colleagues of the teaching staff is 
that of primus inter pares or that of an irresponsible 
and dangerous despot depends, like the verdict upon the 
trustees, upon one's point of view. At Columbia, at 
any rate, the former point of view seems to be dis- 
tinctly in the ascendency. Here, as at other universi- 
ties, the president is shamefully overloaded, and it 
becomes increasingly harder for him to keep his atten- 
tion where it should be, in planning for the future. 
Whether this overloading is a necessary incident of the 
stage of university development in which we find our- 
selves, or is merely because no one has hit upon the 
right way to relieve him, I am not competent to say. 
Certainly the public at large needs some education in 
this matter. A man who would not go to the president 
of the New York Central Railway to buy a ticket to Yon- 
kers will insist upon burdening the president of one 
of our great universities about some affair no less 
trivial. 

Half a century ago, President King examined the boys 
for entrance, taught classes, and kept the college min- 
utes and records of lateness. He brought cases of dis- 
cipline before the trustees, who occupied most of their 
time over them. It was Barnard's habit, as various 
agenda occurred to him, to jot them down on a slate. 
After his death this slate was found in his desk and the 
memoranda upon it showed pathetically, but none the 
less vividly, the trivial details which in his time were 
occupying the attention of the president. When one 
compares these conditions with the present, it is evident 
that, although Columbia still overloads her presidents, 



58 THE UNIVERSITY OF TO-DAY 

she has gone a good way along the path of devolution of 
authority. 

Appointed by the trustees are ten deans and directors, 
who, so far as they themselves desire, are relieved from 
teaching duties. Between 1890 and 1905 the initiative 
as to these appointments came from the faculty con- 
cerned; since then it has come from the president, who, 
however, consults the members of the faculty before mak- 
ing his recommendation to the trustees. Deans are no 
longer the venerable personages which the title ordi- 
narily connotes. Of the five last chosen, the average 
age at appointment was forty years. They serve in a 
triple representative capacity : to the central administra- 
tion, to teachers with divergent views upon education, 
and to the students with their time-consuming needs and 
interests. In the case of the separate corporation, the 
deans have a further direct responsibility to the trus- 
tees of that corporation, and the deans of other facul- 
ties often meet the trustees' committee on education to 
present and discuss reports from the departments in- 
cluded in their respective faculties. The role is not an 
easy one to play, but at any rate they are all doing their 
best and it is their hope that they lighten in some meas- 
ure the pressure which would otherwise fall upon the 
president. 

An experiment in relieving the latter of some of the 
tasks which cannot be classified as falling within any 
particular school has recently been made in the ap- 
pointment of Professor "W. H. Carpenter as Provost. 
While it is too early to judge the result, there can be no 
doubt as to the number and importance of these prob- 
lems. There is also a provost of Barnard College whose 
duty is to maintain and develop the university relations 



ADMINISTRATIVE STAFF 59 

of the College, while the dean is to carry on the internal 
administration and to represent Barnard as an inde- 
pendent organization. At Teachers College, the largest 
single element in the University, the dean is assisted by 
a controller and by two directors, of household and 
industrial arts. 

Less directly connected with teaching and research, 
but performing indirect educational services which it 
is difficult for an outsider to appreciate, are the great 
administrative offices. Columbia is fortunate in having 
at her service, besides the officers already mentioned, 
thirty-four men and women, fifteen of them college 
graduates, whose work is fully or primarily adminis- 
trative, and whose duty is to carry out the daily 
tasks which formerly took up most of the time of the 
president and trustees, as a perusal of the early minutes 
will convincingly show, and which to-day throughout 
the country are too often in the hands of more or less 
efficient faculty committees. 

The lead in establishing these junior administrative 
positions, which was taken at Harvard and Columbia 
at about the same time, has now been followed by all 
the progressive institutions of the United States, and 
there are even signs that the example is being felt in 
England and Germany. These men and women are 
really constituting a new profession of great public 
usefulness. The businesslike administration of their of- 
fices, particularly those of the secretary, the registrar, 
and the officer in charge of buildings and grounds, car- 
ries a great load of routine detail and leaves the teachers 
free to do their teaching, and the deans and advisers to 
establish an acquaintance with each student based on 
personal knowledge rather than printed forms. 



60 THE UNIVERSITY OF TO-DAY 

Work of this kind needs a clear, analytical mind, be- 
cause the fulfillment of its purpose depends upon the 
ability to know, without being told, what is one's busi- 
ness and what is not; and particularly to distinguish 
between a real precedent and a pseudo-precedent. "With 
the professor's particular business, these administra- 
tive officers should have nothing to do: that is, with 
the formulation of constructive educational policy, with 
the organization and carrying on of effective teaching, 
with the pursuit and direction of research and scholarly 
publication. The administrative officer must take heed 
lest he irritate the professor or actually hamper him seri- 
ously in his work; nothing is easier than for an in- 
geniously minded youth in an executive position to spin 
out schemes for reports and statistics that involve un- 
necessary and intolerable burdens upon his academic 
elders and betters. If, however, he keeps clear of these 
pitfalls, he can have the comforting assurance that he 
is doing his share, and it is no small share, in the great 
work of the institution. 

Most closely allied with the president's own office is 
that of the secretary, whose stated duties are few, but 
whose actual tasks are legion. For example, more than 
thirteen thousand persons each year make inquiry as to 
entering the University. Their immediate requirements 
are satisfied. Their names and desires are then recorded 
in order that future material that might interest them 
can be sent without further request on their part. This 
classified card index of correspondence furnishes an in- 
valuable basis for plans to meet the needs of the future. 
Besides carrying on the general correspondence and su- 
pervising the university printing and distribution (this 
moans many thousand more letters and fifty thousand 
dollars' worth of printing), keeping all the academic 



ADMINISTRATIVE STAFF 61 

records and looking after the details of public functions, 
the secretary's office is a sort of ante-room to the presi- 
dent's, and serves, finally, as an experiment station for 
many a new and tentative development. 

Fifty years ago the total provision for janitorial serv- 
ice was one thousand dollars per year, but at present our 
largest administrative office is that of grounds and build- 
ings with a staff of more than three hundred. At its 
head is the university controller, who is responsible not 
only for the routine care of the plant, but for the plan- 
ning and construction of new buildings. In a single 
recent year no fewer than six new buildings, with a floor 
area more than one and one-half times that of the entire 
Forty-ninth Street equipment, and representing an ex- 
penditure of over two millions, were on the stocks. The 
operations of the department are upon so large a scale 
that it is possible to apply to advantage the principles 
of modern scientific management. For example, the de- 
vising of a simple but effective method of testing coal 
resulted in a striking annual saving. In addition to the 
oversight of new construction and the general mainte- 
nance of the plant, the controller and his assistants, the 
superintendent and assistant superintendent of build- 
ings and grounds, are responsible for the residence halls 
of the corporation and of the University commons. Hu- 
man nature being what it is, these furnish particularly 
nerve-racking problems. I am sure they often wish that 
it were now possible, as it was in DeWitt Clinton 's day, 
to furnish board and lodging to the students for a dollar 
and a half per week. 

The registrar's office keeps accurately and availably 
the hundreds of thousands of records upon which de- 
pend the admission, advancement, and graduation of 
an army of more than eleven thousand students of all 



62 THE UNIVERSITY OF TO-DAY 

sorts and conditions, whose status is complicated by seven 
or eight hundred cases of cross-registration annually. 
Plis task has practically doubled within the past five 
years, owing in part to growth in numbers, and in part 
to the greater personal attention given to each student. 
Before the office was upon a satisfactory basis, the right 
hand of the institution did not know what its left was 
doing; students received scholarships simultaneously in 
different schools and others discreetly tucked themselves 
into corners and pursued curricula devoted exclusively 
to fraternity membership or football. 

The bursar, who by the way is technically responsible 
to the treasurer and not to the president, has the al- 
most equally difficult task of administering the complex 
regulations as to fees. He also maintains a students' bank 
and distributes the welcome treasurer's checks at the 
end of each month to the faculty. 

A most useful man to the students is the employment 
secretary, whose records, since the work was given ade- 
quate financial support in 1902, show student earnings 
of considerably more than a million dollars, obtained 
largely through the direct aid of his office. About one- 
third of this sum was earned through summer work of 
various kinds. With the exception of Teachers College, 
the even more important work of providing permanent 
positions for graduates and seeing that good men and 
women are advanced from one position to another, is not 
given the attention that it should receive, and one of our 
greatest needs is more money for this work. 

The work of the chaplain and of the library and admis- 
sions office are described elsewhere, and limitations of 
space prevent more than the mention here of the pur- 
chasing agent, the controller of student organizations, the 
health officer, the newspaper representative, and of offi- 



ADMINISTRATIVE STAFF 63 

eers who, though technically not under University con- 
trol, are really part of its administrative fabric : as, for 
example, the secretary of Earl Hall, the athletic manager, 
the alumni secretary, those in charge of the University 
Press, and the Faculty Club — in sooth, a goodly com- 
pany ! 

He who looks for them can find plenty of incon- 
sistencies in the administrative system. From the time 
that Mr. Low took up the task of establishing some kind 
of organization for the completely disorganized insti- 
tution, there have been periodic swingings of the pen- 
dulum toward greater centralization and then away from 
it. In particular, the routine administrative work of 
the allied corporations is now conducted rather in gen- 
eral harmony with the central offices than under their 
direct control. In not a few cases, changes and excep- 
tions result from questions of personality rather than 
of principle. In general, however, the essential point 
is well looked after, and that is that there should be 
competent persons at the points of contact in our com- 
plex machinery; for it is at these points that friction 
otherwise develops and loss of power ensues. 



m 

WAYS AND MEANS 

Johnson's Announcement. Financial Assets. Sources of Wealth. 
Gifts and their Significance. Expenditures. Problems for Trus- 
tees: Space, Salaries, Earning Capacity, Deficit and Debt. Sites, 
past and present. The Central Group. Other Buildings. The 
Libraries. University Bibliography. Laboratories and Collections. 

The purpose of Columbia University may still be accu- 
rately described in the quaint phraseology of President 
Johnson's announcement of King's College in 1754: 

" A serious, virtuous, and industrious Course of Life 
being first provided for, it is further the Design of this 
College to instruct and perfect the Youth in the Learned 
Languages, and in the Arts of Reasoning exactly, of 
Writing correctly, and Speaking eloquently : And in the 
Arts of Numbering and Measuring, of Surveying and 
Navigation, of Geographj'^ and History, of Husbandry, 
Commerce, and Government; and in the Knowledge of 
all Nature in the Heavens above us, and in the Air, 
Water, and Earth around us, and the various kinds of 
Meteors, Stones, Mines, and IMinerals, Plants and Ani- 
mals, and of every Thing useful for the Comfort, the 
Convenience, and Elegance of Life, in the chief Manu- 
factures relating to any of these things; and finally, to 
lead them from the Study of Nature, to the Knowledge 
of themselves, and of the God of Nature and their duty 
to Him, themselves and one another ; and everything that 
can contribute to their true Happiness both here and 
hereafter. ' ' 

I have tried to describe in baldest outline the con- 
stitutional machinery of the institution for carrying out 
this purpose — " consolidated and yet flexible, central- 

64 



FINANCIAL ASSETS 65 

ized as regards legislation, decentralized as regards ad- 
ministration, living not only at the center but at every 
part." It may now be well to consider briefly (1) what 
are the sinews of war and how obtained, and (2) what is 
the present material equipment, before outlining the 
work of the different schools, summarizing the work of 
an academic year, and finally devoting the remainder of 
the book to what after all makes the real university, 
its human cargo. 

The present financial assets of the four corporations, 
including the assessed valuation upon the land and build- 
ings used for educational purposes, is more than $54,- 
000,000. At Mr. Low's inauguration it was $9,000,000. 
At Dr. Butler's it was $26,000,000. In round figures, 
the present assets of the four corporations are as 
follows : 



Columbia Barnard Teachers Phar- 

University College College macy 
Property owned and 

used $17,000,000 $3,000,000 $2,500,000 $350,000 

Net investments. .. . 31,000,000 1,300,000 2,300,000 

Less debts 3,500,000 600,000 70,000 



An analysis of the sources of the present wealth of the 
University can be made only roughly because the original 
source of certain assets has been complicated by the sale 
of real estate, by building operations, and the like. The 
funds of King's College (based, it may be said in pass- 
ing, mainly upon public lotteries and State grants from 
excise) were swallowed up in the Revolution. The 
$40,000 given by the State Legislature to Columbia Col- 
lege at the end of the last century went into buildings. 
There remain three great sources: The original gift of 
land from Trinity Church in 1754, to which a small ad- 



C6 WAYS AND MEANS 

dition was made by the city now yielding about $127,000 
each year. Then came the grounds of the old Hosack 
Botanical Gardens, west of Fifth Avenue between Forty- 
seventh and Fifty-first streets, which were the gift of 
the State in 1814, a property which at the time, although 
valued at $75,000, it would have been hard to sell for 
$7,000. Its original area has been reduced by sales 
to about two-thirds of its former size; what remains 
yields annually about $578,500. The third source is 
individual gifts and bequests, amounting to nearly $26,- 
000,000, of which only about $200,000 was received 
before 1890. Indeed, in more than one year of Mr. 
Low's administration the gifts greatly exceeded in value 
all those received prior to his inauguration. When one 
considers the totals of the decade just closed, it is in- 
teresting to remember the general consternation and 
amusement when President Butler's first report called 
for $10,000,000. On a single day, March 6, 1911, the 
trustees accepted gifts and bequests of $1,800,000. 

A list of the gifts of $50,000 or more, with the pur- 
poses to which they have been put, will be found in the 
Appendix. Of those received by the central corpora- 
tion since Mr. Low's inauguration, over $6,600,000 have 
been for land and buildings, $8,100,000 for endowments 
and establishment of special funds, and about $570,000 
for miscellaneous purposes. 

It may be of interest to analj'ze these gifts in other 
ways. For example, $6,600,000 came from or on be- 
half of members of the institution (alumni or trustees), 
and about $8,600,000 from persons having no such con- 
nection at the time the gift was made. Classified in 
another way, $6,100,000 was based upon the general 
interest of the donors in the work of the institution as 
a whole, and $9,100,000 was based upon their particular 



GIFTS AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE 67 

interest in some special field of its activity. The bequest 
of John Stewart Kennedy is an excellent example of the 
former type, and that of Joseph Pulitzer of the latter. 

The common interest of different members of one 
family, usually in some particular field, is a significant 
factor in the recent increase in Columbia's resources. 
To W. K. Vanderbilt, his children, and his son-in-law, 
W. D. Sloane, the University owes practically all its 
physical equipment for the study of medicine and the 
endowment of its clinic and hospital. Similarly the fam- 
ily names of Avery, Dodge, Hartley, Havemeyer, Mil- 
bank, Schermerhorn, Stokes, and others may well be held 
in grateful remembrance. 

If when thirty years ago the trustees gave their eon- 
sent to some slight provision for the higher education 
of females, as they called them, they could have fore- 
seen in how large part Columbia 's future resources were 
to be received at the generous hands of women, they 
might, I think, have been less reluctant and half-hearted 
about the matter. The gifts from women have not only 
been conspicuously large, but have been as a rule both 
timely and intelligent. 

Another classification will bring about the close rela- 
tion between the institution and the city of New York, 
a point which I tried to emphasize in the introductory 
chapter. Of these gifts there have come from New 
Yorkers, whose general responsibility to the city has 
been also shown by their gifts to other representative 
activities, the sum of $8,300,000. The remainder, so 
far as I know, has come from those who have not been 
identified with other public activities of the city. An 
interesting and valuable element among these gifts has 
been the provision by general subscription for an aca- 
demic memorial, usually a fellowship, to some conspicu- 



68 WAYS AND MEANS 

ously useful citizen of New York — George "William Cur- 
tis, Joseph Mosenthal, Anton Seidl, Colonel Waring, 
Carl Schurz, or Richard Watson Gilder. 

The value of gifts depends perhaps only secondarily 
upon their amount. The element of timeliness is of 
great importance: Barnard College, for example, came 
into being when fifty people promised to give one hun- 
dred dollars annually for four years. Another factor is 
freedom in the use of the gift. President Butler in a 
recent report has said : 

" What the University most needs is gifts that will 
aid it in doing better the work which it has already 
undertaken, and not gifts which compel it to assume 
new obligations that in turn make an additional drain 
upon its already overtaxed resources. Many of those 
who make gifts to a university really put upon the uni- 
versity the new obligation of acting, without compensa- 
tion, as their own trustees or executors for the purpose 
of carrying out some plan or purpose of their own. An 
examination of the gifts made to American universities 
during a period of years would probably indicate that 
many persons of means desire to use a university for 
some purpose of their own rather than to help it carry 
on the work for which it is established. Gifts for gen- 
eral endowment, for needed buildings or equipment, or 
for the support of work already in progress and insuffi- 
ciently sustained, really help a university to serve the 
purpose for which it exists. Gifts for new and desig- 
nated purposes may or may not help a university. If 
these designated purposes are closely allied with work 
already in progress, or if they are purposes which the 
university is anxious and ready to accomplish, then 
gifts to carry them on are helpful. If, on the other 
hand, the designated purpose is one which the university 
would prefer not to undertake, or one which it cannot 
undertake without adding something to the amount pro- 
posed as a gift, then the gift, instead of being helpful, 
is a source of embarrassment. Nevertheless, whenever 



EXPENDITURES 69 

such a gift is offered it must be accepted, unless the trus- 
tees are to run the risk of grave misunderstanding and 
criticism." 



No more valuable gift has come than that of an 
anonymous donor, who for more than a decade gave 
$30,000 annually for current expenses, absolutely with- 
out restriction. This made provision for a fund irrever- 
ently but affectionately known about the University as 
the " yellow dog " fund, which solved many a trying 
problem arising between budgets. 

Many of the most valuable gifts have not been of 
money at all, but have consisted of works of art, usu- 
ally class memorials. Most important of all are the 
many examples of devoted service on the part of officers 
and trustees. Sometimes this type of gift takes the shape 
of a permanent memorial, like the herbarium of Professor 
Torrey or the chemical museum of Professor Chand- 
ler, but more often it is bound up in the fiber of the 
University itself, and its memory lies in the grateful 
hearts of colleagues and students. 

Entire responsibility and authority for the expendi- 
ture of money rests with the trustees of the several 
corporations. They take this responsibility in the ap- 
proval of the annual budget. At present no faculty 
as such has any statutory power to make suggestions 
as to finances. Departments can recommend only in 
relation to themselves and their members, and this they 
do with great enthusiasm and vigor. The requests for 
desirable increases following the announcement of 
Mr. Kennedy's princely bequest would have consumed 
the income from a sura four times as large. 

In the University Corporation, taking the figures for 



70 WAYS AND MEANS 

1912-13, the annual income is spent proportionately as 
follows : 

For overhead charges, "educational administration".. .$ 151,775.00 
For teachers' salaries, departmental appropriations, etc. 
(including $318,900 received from Barnard and Teach- 
ers colleges) 1,673.988.00 

For care of buildings and grounds 321,538.00 

For library 106,461.50 

For business administration 50,200 00 

For annuities 36,580 00 

For interest 115,945.00 

For redemption fund 100,000.00 

For miscellaneous expenses, including retiring and dis- 
ability allowances, fellowships, prizes, etc 143,646 11 

Total $2,700,133. 61 

To meet these charges, tuition and other student fees 
bring in a total of a little more than a million and a 
half, and rents, mortgages, and dividends about a mil- 
lion and a quarter. A table giving a summary of the 
most recent financial report of the entire institution will 
be found in the Appendix, 

A century ago the total income of the institution was 
about $7,500. The College o\vned, in addition to the 
site and fifty city lots adjacent, some land near Lake 
George, which was later sold for about $11,000. In 
1814 came the gift from the State of the Hosack 
Botanical Gardens, but not until 1842 did the real 
estate of the College begin to produce any appreciable 
income. That year the revenue was $22,855. In the 
year following came the first considerable private be- 
quest since the Revolutionary War — $20,000 from Fred- 
erick Gebhard to found a professorship. Then followed 
another barren period imtil 1881, when Stephen Whitney 
Pha?nix became the first of the great alumni benefactors, 
leaving to the College his valuable collection of books 
and, subject to certain life interests, his entire fortune 



PROBLEMS FOR TRUSTEES 71 

of about half a million dollars. This and President Bar- 
nard 's own estate of about $90,000 were the only impor- 
tant additions until in 1891 the merger with the Medical 
School added the Vanderbilt family to the benefactors of 
the University. For purposes of comparison, it should 
be remembered that in the twenty years prior to 1890 
Harvard University had received $5,000,000 in money 
and $2,500,000 in buildings and lands. 

At the height of Barnard's influence, in 1884-85, the 
total income was short of $350,000. In the year follow- 
ing Mr. Low 's inauguration the receipts from rents were 
$380,000, from students' fees about $250,000, and less 
than $50,000 from interest on trust funds. About 
$30,000 came from annual gifts for specific purposes. 

It must be remembered that the responsibility of the 
trustees is only secondarily for the expenses of a given 
year. Their eyes must always be on the future and in 
their plans for the future they must always keep be- 
fore them the existence of certain problems which are 
difficult enough to cope with singly, but which are 
infinitely more so in the interwoven fashion in which 
they present themselves. 

No institution in the world, I suppose, has had to 
struggle harder than Columbia with the problem of 
space. Crowded from her home by the growing city for 
a second time, she established herself at Morningside at 
a cost of nearly $7,000,000, thereby almost doubling the 
price of land there, and was shortly compelled by her 
own rapid growth to add to her holdings beyond the 
original purchases at an additional expense for land of 
$4,000,000. The main addition was the purchase of the 
South Field. This was made possible by the loyal in- 
terest of a group of alumni and other citizens, who, 



72 WAYS AND MEANS 

when the public sale of the property was threatened in 
1902, purchased the land themselves and held it until 
the University, through the sale of certain other prop- 
erty, was enabled to take it over. It was similar thought- 
ful and generous conduct on the part of certain friends 
of Teachers College that permitted the construction of 
the dormitory building known as Whittier Hall, to the 
east of the original Teachers College site, and its final 
turning over to the College in 1908. 

The wisdom of the University Corporation in adopting 
the expensive type of building entailed by the approval 
in 1893 of the general scheme of Messrs. McKim, JMead, 
and White has been sometimes questioned. There is no 
doubt that it has meant a large initial outlay, larger than 
was first contemplated, owing to the great increase in the 
cost of construction. Apart from the intangible but none 
the less real asset of a stately and dignified architectural 
scheme, however, two definite benefits have become mani- 
fest. The absence of a well-ordered plan or indeed the 
adoption of a plan of some other type would have seri- 
ously limited the number of buildings which could ap- 
propriately be erected upon the restricted area of the 
site, a limitation which would have caused serious trou- 
ble before this; and, furthermore, the lower cost of 
maintenance of these well-constructed buildings repre- 
sents an annual saving of the interest upon a very con- 
siderable capital. The maintenance charges upon the 
Columbia buildings is proportionately to their cost the 
lowest in the United States. 

A second perennial problem is that of academic sala- 
ries. It is, to be sure, often possible to pay men in tech- 
nical branches with the prestige that comes from a title. 
There is a stor>' at the Medical School about an instructor 



SALARIES AND EARNING CAPACITY 73 

who said he could hardly afford promotion to a pro- 
fessorship because the salary was so much lower than 
that of the obscurer position which he then held. There 
are also some few men rich in their own right or in that 
of their wives who will do first-class work regardless 
of salary. In general, however, the University gets what 
it pays for, and what proportion of its total income 
it should pay, and to whom, is a source of never-ending 
worry. The greatly increased cost of living, particu- 
larly in the great cities, the increased resources and con- 
sequent tempting power of the State universities, with 
the resulting ethical problem as to holding some par- 
ticular man at the expense of his fellows, the possibili- 
ties of indirect help to the staff through faculty homes, 
the question of disability allowances and pensions, 
greatly relieved but not wholly solved by the Carnegie 
Foundation, the pressure from increasing numbers or de- 
partmental ambition to create new positions — all these 
and many others are factors in this complex problem. 

Then there is the problem of earning capacity. The 
original King 's College charges were twenty-five shillings 
per quarter, reinforced by a parent's bond against dam- 
ages to property, by mulct not to exceed fourpence for 
each case of negligence in study, and finally by a pistole 
to the president upon graduation. The present fees are, 
needless to say, considerably higher. They are adminis- 
tered in a businesslike way, in general upon an d la 
carte basis rather than table d'hote. That is to say, the 
student pays for the courses he actually takes. The cost 
of instruction, however, has increased still faster than 
the rate and efficiency of the fee collection, and, as a 
matter of fact, it has at no time been possible to add 
to the capital of the institution by surplus from the fees 



74 WAYS AND MEANS 

of students. President Barnard continually pointed out 
to the trustees the peculiar responsibility of Columbia 
to take that position of leadership to which her endow- 
ment, with fees as only a secondary source of income, 
entitled her. The present proportion of total annual ex- 
pense met by earnings varies from eighty-two per cent, 
in Teachers College, where this high figure presents a 
problem to which the dean has repeatedly called atten- 
tion, down to twenty-nine per cent, at the College of 
Physicians and Surgeons. 

There is always present the question of maintaining 
departments which are of great importance in the field 
of scholarship, but which attract very few students, and 
the problem of facing certain and serious loss of fees 
through an advance in educational standards, as was 
done in medicine ten years ago and is about to be done 
in engineering. 

Since, in any event, the student pays only a part of 
the actual cost of tuition, the distinction between fee- 
paying students and scholarship students is only one of 
degree. The problem of providing for the really deserv- 
ing student regardless of his ability to pay fees has been 
fairly well solved in recent years by loan funds and fel- 
lowships, and particularly since a logical system of tui- 
tion scholarships, with tenure depending on high stand- 
ing, has replaced the old haphazard system of exemption. 
Such scholarships are available for one out of every 
ten students. 

The question of the limitation of the student body, 
which already faces Teachers College and which will 
face all the other parts of the University, one after 
another, involves not only the educational question of 
individual attention to each student, but the limitations 
of space, and finally the financial fact that, although 



DEFICIT AND DEBT 75 

within certain limits students' fees are assets, at other 
points every individual student involves an additional 
expense. 

Bound up in all of these is the final problem of deficit 
and debt. After their bitter struggle, lasting for more 
than half a century, with both these ogres, the struggle 
being made the harder through the constant temptation, 
bravely resisted, to pay for the present from the future 
by the sale of real estate, the trustees breathed a sigh 
of relief when, in 1872, they found the institution free 
and clear. President Barnard endeavored to prepare 
their minds for a return to bondage by reminding them 
that " debt is no doubt a great evil, but there are evils 
w^orse than this, and among these is stagnation. ' ' It was 
not, however, until the purchase and development of the 
Morningside property was undertaken that a debt was 
incurred : $1,000,000 to meet one-half the purchase price, 
$1,300,000 for buildings, $600,000 for grading and pav- 
ing, and $85,000 for interest on the debts already in- 
curred. The remaining expenses were met by the sale 
of the Forty-ninth Street site and other real estate at 
about $1,200,000 and from gifts and bequests of about 
$4,000,000. 

The original proposal to use temporarily the old 
buildings on the site would have involved a total 
expense of but $2,700,000 and slight indebtedness, if 
any, but, as events have proved, the more ambitious plan 
later adopted was the wiser. For many long years this 
debt, although the trustees succeeded in funding it tem- 
porarily at three per cent., proved a grievous burden. 
The merger of the Medical School in 1891, although it 
increased the nominal assets of the University by more 
than a million and a half dollars, added tremendously 



76 WAYS AND MEANS 

to its expenses. Although fortunate educationally, it 
proved embarrassing financially that the old inex- 
pensive and ineffective system of medical instruction by 
didactic lectures broke down at about this time and had 
to be replaced by the infinitely more expensive type of 
instruction by laboratory and clinic. 

In spite of a special guarantee fund, generously pro- 
vided by Mr. Low and others, nearly $850,000 had to be 
advanced between 1894 and 1906 from the endowment of 
the University, or borrowed, to meet the annual defi- 
ciencies incurred for interest and for educational devel- 
opments. In 1902 came the opportunity to buy the ur- 
gently needed South Field — two city blocks to the south 
of the original purchase — at a cost of about two and a 
quarter million dollars, and the trustees decided that 
the time had come to sell a part of their Upper Estate 
(the old Botanical Garden), which, with the exception 
of sixteen lots sold early in Barnard's administration to 
provide for the School of Mines, their predecessors 
had with providential wisdom and courage held for 
nearly a century. The sale of lots, w-hich went on from 
1903 to 1906, netted more than three and one-half mil- 
lion dollars, and from the prices realized the trustees 
felt justified in increasing the ground rent upon the 
remainder of the property as the leases expired, so that 
the net income from the reduced holdings ultimately 
exceeded that from the original property. This caused 
a protest from the dwellers on the property, our own 
alumni, and others, many of whom had built handsome 
houses on their leaseholds, and involved the University 
in tedious litigation, from which it finally emerged vic- 
torious in 1911. After all, the first responsibility of the 
trustees was not to the tenants, but to the educational 
needs of the institution, and, as a shrewd financier 



SITES, PAST AND PRESENT 77 

had said some years before when asked for a contribu- 
tion, ' ' You can 't expect outsiders to help you until you 
administer your own real estate in a businesslike 
way." In 1909, the University made an arrangement 
for the refunding and gradual retirement of its 
remaining debt of about $3,000,000 in annual install- 
ments of $100,000, payable from the income in rents 
from the Upper Estate. 

For the first time in fifteen years the budget of the 
corporation showed a surplus for 1908-09, but with calls 
on all hands for increased expenditure the deficit re- 
turned three years later and the University is again 
in exirema spe salutis, and, while the institution con- 
tinues to be progressive, such, doubtless, is bound to be its 
normal condition. 

The trustees are most anxious that unnecessary ex- 
penditures shall not cause the deficits to mount up un- 
duly. Last year they asked for definite recommendations 
from schools and departments as to ways and means to 
reduce our expenditures. As would probably be the case 
at any other institution of learning, the result was a 
series of interesting suggestions as to fields in which 
large additional funds could profitably be spent, with 
here and there a proposal for some saving trivial in 
amount. After all, a university is not a business ven- 
ture, nor are professors business men. A certain amount 
of waste seems to be inevitable, and the trustees must 
see to it that the amount is kept as low as possible. 

From its first habitat in the vestry of Trinity Church, 
King's College soon moved to a beautiful site of three 
acres on Murray Street, where the College remained for 
nearly a century before it was forced northward by the 
growth of the city to what was expected to be a very 



78 WAYS AND MEANS 

temporary abiding place at Forty-ninth Street, but which 
was destined to be its home for forty years. There was, 
to be sure, constant talk of moving. As early as 1817 an 
amalgamation with Washington College, then on Staten 
Island, was considered and, later, a scheme to build on 
the Botanical Garden property from plans to be drawn 
by Richard Upjohn. From 1866 on, the trustees' min- 
utes contain constant reference to plans for removal. 
In 1872, the alumni favored taking the undergraduate 
work out of the city and locating it in the country, and 
later in the same year property was purchased for the 
purpose somewhat farther uptown than the present site. 
Expensive buildings were erected upon the IMadison 
Avenue property, however, and Mr. Low's election 
found Columbia still there, greatly overcrowded and 
overflowing across Forty-ninth Street into private 
houses. He recognized the impossibility of continuing 
under existing conditions and pointed out that the Col- 
lege had three choices: to move the entire institution 
to the country, to separate it up among different sites 
either in the city or outside, or finally to find a suitable 
single site for all parts on Manhattan Island. The adop- 
tion of the third possibility was hastened by the discov- 
ery and suggestion of a suitable piece of land by Mr. 
John B. Pine, of the board of trustees, in 1891. This 
site was on high ground, overlooking both the Hudson 
and the Sound, running north from One Hundred and 
Sixteenth Street, between Amsterdam Avenue and 
Broadway, and containing sixteen acres. The property 
was owned by the New York Hospital and occupied at 
the time by the Bloomingdale Asylum for the Insane. 
It had been the scene of patriotic defenses in the War 
of 1812 and of an actual battle fought by Washington 
in the early days of the Revolution. Indeed, there is a 



SITES, PAST AND PRESENT 79 

tradition that an ancient pine, which stood until 1906, 
had been held in peculiar veneration by the Indians of 
Manhattan Island. 

The decision to move to Morningside Heights — the 
name, by the way, is now never heard except in certain 
college songs — was at first greeted with considerable 
alarm, for the region was about as remote and inacces- 
sible as Mt. Kisco is to-day. Indeed, there are those 
still living in the neighborhood who remember when it 
was usual to stay overnight when one went down to the 
City. With the exception of a few, however, who indeed 
are still unreconciled, the importance and wisdom of 
the decision was soon generally recognized. The pro- 
ject excited great popular interest and, most important. 
Teachers College and Barnard College were inspired to 
buy land adjacent. Indeed, one of the great gifts to 
Barnard was made on condition that the building for 
which it provided should be located within a thousand 
feet of the University. 

The new site was not to come into the possession of 
the University until October, 1894, and the period be- 
tween purchase and possession was wisely employed not 
only in raising the necessary funds, but by giving care- 
ful consideration to an architectural scheme. The lack 
of such careful planning, not only for the present but for 
the future, is only too evident in the appearance of 
most American institutions of learning. The ultimate 
decision lay between a Gothic scheme recommended by 
Charles C. Haight of the class of 1861, the designer of 
two beautiful buildings at Forty-ninth Street — ^now, 
alas, destroyed — and a Renaissance scheme recommended 
by Charles F. McKim and his partners. The plans of 
the latter were adopted and Mr. McKim 's devoted share, 
until his death in 1909, toward making the University 



80 WAYS AND MEANS 

what it is to-day is recorded in the inscription placed in 
his honor in South Court: Be super artificis spectant 
monumenta per amios. 

The first cornerstone to be laid was that of the Library 
in 1895. A year and a half later, the site itself was 
formally dedicated in the presence of five thousand 
people. President Low said on this occasion : 

** We are met to-day to dedicate to a new use this his- 
toric ground. Already it is twice consecrated. In the 
Revolutionary War this soil drank the blood of patriots, 
willingly shed for the independence of the land. Since 
then for three generations it has witnessed the union 
of science and of brotherly kindness, devoted to the care 
of humanity, suffering from the most mysterious of all 
the ills that flesh is heir to ; to-day we dedicate it in the 
same spirit of loyalty to the country, and of devotion 
to mankind, to the inspiring use of a venerable and his- 
toric University." 

The other component parts of the present University 
have had many homes. The Law School has had four, 
the Medical School six, the College of Pharmacy eight ; 
Barnard was born and spent her babyhood in a rented 
house on Madison Avenue, and Teachers College hails 
from University Place. 

After the complicated and tedious processes of re- 
moval, the University was finally opened in the new 
home on October 14, 1897. Of the present eighteen 
buildings of the corporation, but six had been erected 
and two of the asylum buildings were also used for aca- 
demic purposes. 

I was a senior at the time and well remember our 
mixed emotions, into which entered a sense of grandeur 
and confusion, of the smell of plaster and muddy foot- 
paths, of magnificent but inconvenient distances between 




o 

3 
J 

3 

> 



THE CENTRAL GROUP 81 

classrooms, and memories of the crowded but convenient 
and familiar home we had left. We found the situation 
as remote as did our academic predecessors in 1857, when 
they moved to a new home that " lay between the Pot- 
ter's Field and the Bull Pen." The previous occupancy 
of the land as an asylum recalled the old joke about 
Columbia being the home of the deaf, dumb, and blind 
(in 1857 the Forty-ninth Street property had been oc- 
cupied by an institution for deaf mutes and by a sash 
and blind factory). The Grant Monument, recently 
dedicated, was until then the only attraction to induce 
the world to make the inconvenient trip up to these 
remote regions. The University was followed, however, 
by the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the Union Theo- 
logical Seminary and other public institutions, including 
schools of music and art. Churches have sprung up and 
apartment houses by the hundred. The subway and 
electric cars and omnibuses have almost succeeded in 
making it " downtown." The district still retains an 
atmosphere of its own, however, figuratively and liter- 
ally. No one coming up from lower New York can fail 
to be impressed by the difference in the quality of the 
air as he leaves the Subway at One Hundred and Six- 
teenth Street. 

In the words of a visiting French journalist, Colum- 
bia has not alone its lecture halls and laboratories, but 
its churches, libraries, physicians, gardens, post-office, 
telegraph stations, barber shops, dining and living halls, 
service buildings. "It is not a university," he ex- 
claimed to the readers of the Matin, ''it is a city! " 
Speaking statistically, the University Corporation occu- 
pies at One Hundred and Sixteenth Street twenty-six 
and a quarter acres, at Fiftj^-ninth Street a little more 



82 WAYS AND MEANS 

than two. The Barnard property is just about four 
acres, and that of Teachers College three and a half, 
plus fifteen acres at Van Cortlandt Park and two city lots 
at the Speyer School site in Manhattanville. The Col- 
lege of Pharmacy occupies three lots at Sixty-eighth 
Street. Outside of the city there are 583 acres at Camp 
Columbia, for engineering students, at Morris, Conn., 
and 426 acres at the farm at Pishkill, N. Y. 

The total number of academic buildings — so far as 
one can separate them, for particularly at the Medical 
School and Teachers College they run into one another 
in a confusing way — is forty-five. 

The University buildings are of a classic style, em- 
bodying, however, the principles of the early masters 
of the Renaissance. The central feature of the archi- 
tectural scheme is, of course, the magnificent Library, 
200 X 200 feet and 134 feet high. Its base line is just 
150 feet above the Hudson. This building of gray 
limestone, with its commanding dome and noble portico, 
was recently included in a contest of architects among 
the five most beautiful buildings in America, the only 
buildings receiving more votes being the National Cap- 
itol, the Public Library and Trinity Church of Boston, 
and the Congressional Library. A striking note of unity 
is achieved through the fact that the other buildings of 
the group have all the same base line as the Library, 
and the same cornice line sixty-nine feet above. The 
bases of the other buildings are of light granite, with 
upper stories of Indiana limestone and brick of rich and 
varying shades. The entrance to all the buildings is from 
the campus, not from the street. 

The main axis of the group runs north from the 
Library through the still incomplete and unsightly Uni- 
versity Hall, which contains the gymnasium, the com- 



THE CENTRAL GROUP 83 

mons, and the central heating and lighting plant, on 
into the Green. To the south, it runs through the spa- 
cious South Court (which provides a fitting approach 
to the Library), across One Hundred and Sixteenth 
Street and the athletic field and tennis courts of South 
Field. At right angles to this axis are three supple- 
mentary axes defined by buildings running east and 
west. The beautiful St. Paul's Chapel, recalling the 
early Renaissance churches in Northern Italy, and Earl 
Hall, the students' building, flank the Library. To the 
north, Schermerhorn, for natural science, and Have- 
meyer, for chemistry, each 200 feet by 80, flank Uni- 
versity Hall. Upon a lower level, and between this line 
of buildings and Teachers College, across One Hundred 
and Twentieth Street, is the University Green of about 
three acres. To the south of the Library, the One Hun- 
dred and Sixteenth Street axis is defined by beautiful 
buildings, each about 200 feet by 53, upon three of the 
corners — Hamilton for the College, Kent for law and 
political science, and Journalism. 

The whole scheme is bound together by an outer line 
of intervening buildings, which run north and south 
upon the avenues. North of One Hundred and Sixteenth 
Street are four academic buildings, each about 150 feet 
by 60: Engineering and Mines on the Broadway side 
and on Amsterdam Avenue Fayerweather, for physics, 
and Philosophy, which also houses the advanced work 
in letters. The lines are carried southward by three 
dormitory buildings, each 137 feet by 60, Hartley and 
Livingston on Amsterdam, and Furnald on Broadway. 
Inner buildings, facing north and south, are included 
in the architectural scheme, and one, for the Avery 
library and architecture, has been erected, completing, 
with Schermerhorn, Fayerweather, and the Chapel, the 



84 WAYS AND MEANS 

first of the four smaller quadrangles for which the plans 
ultimately call. Underground, all the buildings are con- 
nected by a system of tunnels, through which water, 
heated air, gas, and electricity are distributed. 

Across Amsterdam Avenue lies the recently purchased 
East Field, on which the only buildings thus far erected 
are the cancer research laboratories and the handsome 
President's House. This latter was included in the 
original plans, but had to wait nearly twenty years for 
erection. Now that the growth of the city has blotted 
out the outlook upon the Hudson to the west, one of 
our valued academic possessions is the fine view from 
the President's House over Morningside Park, across 
the city, and to the hills of Long Island. 

In comparing the architecture of Columbia with that 
of any one of the rural institutions which pays intel- 
ligent attention to its architecture, say Princeton, one 
is struck with the compactness of the former scheme. 
This is, of course, symptomatic of the enormous cost 
of land on Manhattan Island. The fact that Columbia 
could depend for her architectural effects neither upon 
great space nor upon any striking configuration of the 
ground, as is the case at Wisconsin and California and 
Cornell, accounts for its second characteristic, the un- 
usually close uniformity of the buildings. 

The scheme was at first regarded by not a few 
critics as unnecessarily expensive, cold, and formal. 
The high cost of the buildings was undoubtedly a 
severe temporary handicap, the great expense of each 
unit postponing sometimes for years the adequate sup- 
port of important parts of university work. The build- 
ings wore likened to a tomb among factories, and the dor- 
mitories were later dubbed the Columbia prisons. The 
plan suffered from having to go into effect in so incom- 



i 



THE CENTRAL GROUP 85 

plete a form. One was forcibly reminded of a small boy 
who had lost his first teeth and had attained only three or 
four of his second set. "With time, however, has come 
a vindication of the original conception. As the later 
buildings rose in their places, each improved the gen- 
eral appearance. This is true even of the inner build- 
ing, Avery, which many had feared would crowd the 
campus unduly. Mr. Brunner, who designed the Mines 
Building, and Messrs. Howells and Stokes, the archi- 
tects of the Chapel, succeeded in retaining the general 
harmony without losing their own individuality, and 
indeed, the chief architects, Messrs. McKim, Mead, and 
White, not only made Hamilton, Kent, and Avery far 
more beautiful buildings than the earlier Schermer- 
horn and Engineering, but introduced a pleasing variety 
in detail in the newer buildings, which has done much 
to soften the original severity. 

Any plan of smaller and cozier buildings would have 
to-day been overwhelmed by the apartment houses tow- 
ering on all sides, if indeed the growth in student num- 
bers had not already forced reconstruction or renewal. 
The large scale, furthermore, provides for spacious and 
striking interior effects. Very few academic interiors 
in the world can compare in beauty with the vestibules 
of Journalism or Fumald, the reception rooms in the 
President's House, the trustees' room with its beautiful 
oak wainscoting, or the reading rooms of Avery and 
Kent. The latter indeed, two hundred feet long and 
lined with books, has caused one of the law professors 
to say that he has given up golf now that his legal re- 
searches furnish all the exercise that he needs. Finest 
of all are the soaring interiors of St. Paul's Chapel and 
the Library, the former in warm and harmonizing shades 
of brown and buff, and the latter green and gray and 



86 WAYS AND MEANS 

blue. Out of doors the old note of bareness has gone 
with the growth of ivy and the careful horticultural 
development of the grounds, and the many beautiful 
gifts that have come as class memorials and in other 
ways. Our site may lack the distinction which has come 
with centuries of care and of gentle decay to Oxford 
and Cambridge, but we may well be proud of not a 
few of our vistas, as, for example, that down I\Iilbank 
Quadrangle to the Barnard buildings, or across the 
Green to the Gothic turrets of Union Seminary, or, 
finally, the view under the trees from the Faculty Club 
across South Court, with its ancient yews and its foun- 
tains, to the statue of Alma Mater and the fagade of the 
Library. 

Outside the general architectural scheme are the Fac- 
ulty Club and East Hall, relics from the Bloomingdale 
days, a small observatory, and a greenhouse. There 
are also four private houses north of East Fjeld — the 
Deutsches Ilaus, the Maison Frangaise, and homes for 
the Chaplain and College Dean. There is a fine boathouse 
on the Hudson, and in the plans of the trustees and the 
hopes of the undergraduates lies a stadium to be erected 
upon an athletic field to be reclaimed, when funds 
are available, from the waters of the river, which are 
providentially shallow along shore at One Hundred and 
Sixteenth Street. 

Across Broadway from the central group are the 
Barnard College buildings, which were designed by Hugh 
Lamb and Charles A. Rich. They are on a slightly 
smaller scale and tlieir terra-cotta trimmings make them 
more ornate, but they harmonize well with the University 
buildings. At the northern end of the Barnard prop- 
erty, Milbank, Brinckerhoff, and Fiske lie on three sides 



OTHER BUILDINGS 87 

of a pleasant court. At the southern end of the inter- 
vening Milbank Quadrangle, which extends for three 
city blocks, is Brooks, a beautifully designed and deco- 
rated dormitory for women. Barnard has ambitious 
plans for additional buildings to complete the Milbank 
Quadrangle, and fortunately the outlook for their early 
construction is bright. 

The rapid growth of Teachers College has filled the 
city block to the north of the Green almost solidly with 
buildings by various architects and of varying archi- 
tectural success. The Main Building — the first aca- 
demic structure, by the way, to be erected at Morning- 
side, in 1894 — Milbank, which contains a beautifully 
decorated chapel, a memorial from the donor of the 
building, Joseph Milbank, to his parents, and the ad- 
mirably equipped Thompson Physical Education Build- 
ing, all face One Hundred and Twentieth Street. On 
the One Hundred and Twenty-first Street side are the 
Macy Manual Arts Building and the most recent struc- 
ture of the group. Household Arts, singularly successful 
in the combination of large windows and abundant sun- 
shine, with good architectural effect. On Broadway is 
the handsome building of the Horace Mann School, and 
on Amsterdam Avenue a combined women's dormitory 
and apartment building. In addition. Teachers College 
has half a mile to the north the Speyer Building, com- 
bining a demonstration and experiment school and a 
social center. It is also developing, near Van Cortlandt 
Park, a plot of fifteen acres, recently purchased, partly 
for school purposes and partly for faculty and student 
residence. 

The best buildings at the site of the College of Phy- 
sicians and Surgeons are on Tenth Avenue, between 
Fifty-ninth Street and Sixtieth Street — the handsome 



88 WAYS AND MEANS 

and excellently equipped Sloane Hospital, with 173 beds 
for women and 100 cribs for infants, and the Vanderbilt 
Clinic. Three of the four other buildings, lying to 
the east of these, were put up just before the change 
already mentioned, from the didactic to the laboratory 
and clinical method in the teaching of medicine, and as 
a result are none too well adapted to their present pur- 
poses. Leaving the question of architectural beauty 
aside, there is a certain resemblance between the build- 
ings and equipment of the College of Physicians and 
Surgeons and that of some of the more progressive col- 
leges of Oxford. In both there is much admirable mod- 
ern equipment, upon which the observer comes unex- 
pectedly in inconvenient locations. 

Whether the present home of the "P. & S.," as it 
is affectionately called, is to be changed is a moot ques- 
tion. East Field was purchased primarily to bring the 
Medical School into the University group, but the Sloane 
Hospital and Vanderbilt Clinic and the recent alliance 
with the Presbyterian Hospital are strong anchoi*s to 
hold the school downto\\Ti, and for the present, at any 
rate, plans for removal have been postponed. 

The College of Pharmacy occupies an ornate Re- 
naissance building on Sixty-eighth Street, near Broad- 
way, specially constructed and well equipped to meet 
its particular needs. 

To complete the catalogue of buildings, one must 
mention the farmhouses at Fishkill and the fourteen 
buildings that go to make up the equipment of Camp 
Columbia for engineering students in the Connecticut 
Hills, near Litchfield. 

King's College had rather a notable collection of books, 
including a complete collection of the publications of the 



THE LIBRARIES 89 

Oxford Press. Perhaps a hundred of these early vol- 
umes still remain on the shelves, the others were lost 
or destroyed during the Revolution. Seventy-five years 
later the library had not yet recovered from these losses, 
the collection being then a small and inaccessible af- 
fair of about 15,000 volumes, under the sole care of 
an officer whose salary was $300. In 1881, however, 
Stephen "Whitney Phcenix, '59, bequeathed his library 
of 7,000 valuable volumes, and two years later a pro- 
fessional librarian, the enthusiastic Melvil Dewey, was 
appointed, who in a single year increased the circula- 
tion of books fivefold. During Dewey's three years of 
service manj'^ books were bought and a short-lived school 
of library economy was founded. 

At Barnard 's death the library had about one hundred 
thousand books. ]\Ir. Low gave particular attention to 
its development, the new men called to the faculties 
called vigorously for books, and the collection from then 
on has grown rapidly, until at present the University 
possesses some five hundred and thirty thousand vol- 
umes and one hundred thousand pamphlets, including 
sixty thousand doctor's dissertations. The various cata- 
logues contain a much larger total of cards, descriptive 
and analytical. The library counts to the full upon the 
opportunities furnished by the other collections in the 
city, particularly the public library, and it has further- 
more a system of borrowing and lending rare books with 
university and other libraries outside of New York. 

James H. Canfield, who was librarian from 1900 to his 
death ten years later, gave particular attention to effi- 
ciency of service and used to boast that, while it required 
two days to get a book in a German and two hours in an 
English university, at Columbia it took but two minutes. 
The library staff is now greater than was the entire 



90 WAYS AND MEANS 

teaching staff of the institution thirty-five years ago. 

Like every other progressive institution, Columbia is 
struggling with the problem of combining a centralized 
administrative control with professorial initiative in 
purchases, and with the distribution of books and du- 
plicate catalogue cards to those points all over the 
buildings where they will be of the greatest actual serv- 
ice to students and officers. The problem is incapable of 
an ideal solution. Although the librarian, for example, 
is not afraid to purchase several copies of standard 
books to supply the departmental libraries, forty-three in 
all, he cannot with his limited funds do this in the case 
of expensive but much used journals. 

This question of limited revenue is a very serious one, 
and, unless through special endowment or otherwise the 
library can receive a very much larger income, it must 
expect to lose its present high position among university 
collections. A professor recently called from one of the 
newer State universities complained, Avith no small bit- 
terness, that the allowance for books in his particular 
field was five times as great there as at Columbia. 

Although the library cannot afford to be in the market 
for rare and beautiful books as such, not a few of these 
have come through gifts, including several illuminated 
manuscripts and two hundred and fifty incunabula. It 
has also some valuable autograph material, including the 
correspondence of De"Witt Clinton, and an extraordinary 
collection of newspaper clippings relating to the Civil 
War. The interesting and rapidly-growing collection of 
Columbiana has been of much service in the preparation 
of this volume. Through the generous co-operation of 
friends, notably the late J. Pierpont Morgan, and Alfred 
White, the library has been able to supplement its own 
collections and to arrange in recent years for many 



THE LIBRARIES 91 

public exhibitions, usually held in connection with some 
anniversary celebration. 

The practical usefulness of the library depends in 
large measure upon the separate school and departmental 
collections. The most sumptuous is the Avery Library 
for Architecture and the Allied Arts, a memorial to a 
young architect, Henry Ogden Avery, who died in 1890. 
The nucleus was his own collection of books, which, it 
is interesting to remember, was deposited at Columbia 
because his parents wished the collection to be available 
to practicing architects and draftsmen, and Columbia's 
was at the time the only library open in the evening. 
Through the generous and intelligent support of Mr. 
and Mrs. Avery, the nucleus has grown to be one of 
the great fine arts collections in the world, with 21,784 
volumes and with its own special building erected by Mr. 
S. P. Avery in 1912 as a memorial to his brother and 
his parents. The Bryson Library at Teachers College 
of nearly one hundred thousand volumes is one of the 
best collections of educational works in existence. The 
Law Library of about fifty thousand, on the other hand, 
has been running behind through insufficient support. 
The alumni of the Law School, however, are now inter- 
esting themselves in its improvement. The collection at 
the Medical School has recently been enriched by the 
personal collection of the late Dr. E. G. Jane way and by 
the support of Mrs. Russell Sage. Barnard has a good 
working collection, largely supported by her alumnae. 
For the undergraduates there is a college study in Ham- 
ilton, and similar provision is made, for the students of 
Journalism. 

In general, each department and laboratory has its 
own special reading room, with books at hand for imme- 
diate and informal use. Some of these are unusually 



92 WAYS AND MEANS 

well equipped, as for example the biological collection 
given by the late Charles H. Senff, the George Rice 
Carpenter Memorial Library for English, and an ex- 
traordinary collection of books presented by the Chinese 
Government in recognition of the establishment of the 
Dean Lung Professorship, one of the many endowments 
which the University owes to General H. W. Carpentier 
of the Class of '48. 

Perhaps this is not a strictly logical place to speak 
of the books and articles going out from the University 
as contrasted with those coming in, but, until some 
device is found for the presentation of printed mate- 
rial in two or three dimensions instead of the one to 
which we are at present limited, is such a thing as a 
really logical arrangement possible? 

The University Bibliography for 1912 contains sixty- 
four closely printed pages. Including the prolific Teach- 
ers College, it records sixty-nine general series and 
thirty-one departmental bulletins and series. Alumni 
and student publications number nineteen, some of the 
latter, by the way, being of real scholarly importance, 
as for example the Columhia Law Review. The personal 
bibliography of the professors fills fifty closely printed 
pages. 

There had been an occasional broadside list of the 
students of King's College, but the first annual cata- 
logue was printed by the janitor in 1848. Last year, 
beside school and divisional bulletins aggregating 1,789 
pages, there was printed a catalogue of 626 pages, a 
list of officers and alumni of 1,151 pages, and a volume 
of Aimual Beports of 352 pages. This last shares with 
the Univfrsitij Quarterly the important function of re- 
vealing the University to its own members, as well as 



PUBLICATIONS 93 

to the public at large. Since Barnard's first report, the 
president 's own contributions to this volume have always 
been of importance, but the supplementary material, in- 
cluded since 1880, had been rather perfunctory until in 
1900, through its frank discussion of larger problems 
and forecasts of the future, rather than devotion to tech- 
nical details of registration and the like, the first re- 
port of Teachers College set a model which later reports 
from deans and other administrative officers have 
followed. 

The Columbia University Press, founded in 1893, has 
published 175 volumes, many of them of distinct im- 
portance to scholarship. Its most ambitious project is 
a complete collection of the works of John Milton, now 
being prepared under the editorial supervision of Pro- 
fessor Trent, A University Bookstore under the aus- 
pices of the Press has been maintained since 1898. 

In 1890, there appeared a Bulletin, ' ' issued by author- 
ity " and singularly unattractive in appearance. It was 
principally a rehash of the college regulations and 
abstracts from the records of the trustees' meetings. Its 
issue was irregular and there were no editorials until 
1895. Three years later the University Press took over 
the publication, and in 1898 it appeared as the Columbia 
University Quarterly. To-day the Quarterly is one of 
the standard publications of its type. It contains more 
than five hundred pages annually and is admirably 
illustrated. While special issues dealing comprehensively 
with some particular field of University activity are an 
important feature, a broad editorial policy does not con- 
fine the articles and editorials to matters dealing nar- 
rowly with Columbia's immediate interests. 

Of the University journals and series, the only ones 
antedating Llr. Low's inauguration are the Political Sci- 



94 WAYS AND MEANS 

ence Quarterly, a journal of international influence, 
dating from 1886, and the School of Mines Quarterly, 
from 1881. The Educational Review began in 1890, as 
did the Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law. 
Of later publications one of the most important is the 
Romanic Review. Teachers College, which has its own 
publication office, maintains not only the Teachers Col- 
lege Record, established in 1900, but the Columbia Uni- 
versity Contributions to Education, 1906, and other im- 
portant series. 

Not so many years ago it would have been appropriate 
and easy to classify the general equipment of an edu- 
cational institution as library, museum, fine arts col- 
lections, and, perhaps least important, laboratories or 
cabinets, as they were then called ; to-day, however, labor- 
atories are not confined to natural philosophy, but are 
being established for history, politics, statistics, and 
journalism. Books are " tools," and museums have be- 
come teaching collections. The well-equipped Deutsches 
Ilaus and Maison Frangaise are not merely libraries or 
museums, but are working instruments of culture of a 
new and important type. 

In general, the Columbia equipment is for use rather 
than for show, and anything that is not in frequent use 
is not provided, if it is available elsewhere in the city. 
Although one piece of laboratory equipment dates 
back to King's College, a telescope borrowed and used 
by George Washington, the real development of 
the laboratories began with the removal to the present 
site, the crowded conditions at Forty-ninth Street 
making much growth there impossible. The present 
mechanical engineering laboratory is vast enough to 
make a full-sized locomotive appear no larger than nor- 



LABORATORIES AND COLLECTIONS 95 

mal, and others are in proportion. In general, though 
not uniformly, the equipment is adequate. The equip- 
ment for natural science at Barnard College is particu- 
larly good and the household arts laboratories of Teach- 
ers College supply the last word in their new fields of 
study. Much of the University laboratory equipment, 
and far from the least useful, is home-made ; this is no- 
tably true in mining. Certain departments owe their 
equipment to special gifts, as for example the Phoenix 
laboratories for physics, the Worthington and Allis labo- 
ratories in mechanical engineering, the recently opened 
Nichols laboratory for chemistry, and those for experi- 
mental surgery and cancer research. 

Gymnasiums are to-day regarded as laboratories for 
physical education. The University gymnasium was the 
first of the great academic structures for this purpose, 
and is still in the front rank. Physical education is pre- 
scribed for the younger students, and the annual use of 
the gymnasium and swimming pool is more than eighty 
thousand. The more recent Thompson Building at 
Teachers College is lavishly equipped for research in 
physical education. 

When Arnold Bennett visited Columbia not long ago, 
what seemed to interest him the most was the sight of 
a Chinese student in the modern history " laboratory," 
collecting clippings from German papers about the war 
between Italy and Turkey. Through the aid of a former 
Tammany chieftain, Patrick McGowan, a politics labo- 
ratory has been well equipped, and laboratory work is 
also being done in statistics, legislative drafting, and 
perhaps most notably in journalism, where the " cubs," 
among other tasks, are required to watch a moving- 
picture reel and then to describe what they have seen. 

At Columbia there is no general policy with regard 



96 WAYS AND MEANS 

to the collection of scientific equipment in museums and 
elsewhere, this being left primarily to individual or 
departmental initiative. The only general University 
policy is a negative one of an unwillingness on the part 
of the trustees to duplicate, beyond small teaching col- 
lections, the wealth of the public and available private 
museums of the city. The Torrey Herbarium dates from 
1860, and Rutherfurd's Photographic Star Plates come 
shortly afterwards. Both of these are of genuine scien- 
tific value and both were prepared and given by trustees. 
The Chandler Chemical Museum and the Egleston Min- 
eralogical Museum had their beginnings in Barnard's 
time. Besides these, perhaps the most significant mu- 
seums are those of anatomy, recently made available 
for teaching and exhibition purposes by the gift of Ed- 
ward S. Harkness (to whom the University is also 
largely indebted for the financial provisions for the re- 
cent alliance with the Presbyterian Hospital), the Edu- 
cational Museum of Teachers College, and a Dramatic 
Museum designed to stand in the same relation to the 
arts of the drama as the Avery Library stands to those 
of the architect, decorator, and landscape architect. In 
the Students' Building is a museum sui generis, the ath- 
letic trophy room, which contains among other treasures 
the shell of 1878, the only one in which an American 
crew ever won a race at Henley, 

The devoted custodian of the Avery Library, ]\Ir. E. 
R. Smith, has made a catalogue of the fine arts collec- 
tions of the LTnivcrsity, which contains a surprisingly 
large number of items. Practically all have come by 
gift, subject since 1898 to the approval of an advisory 
committee on art. In addition to $150,000 for an ath- 
letic field and towards a memorial hall, and in addition 




St. Paul's Chapel 



LABORATORIES AND COLLECTIONS 97 

also to numberless direct gifts to needy students, to 
fraternities, athletics, and other student enterprises, 
alumni subscriptions have provided most of these ob- 
jects of art. They have usually been class memorials 
and include portraits, busts, gates and other ornamental 
iron and bronze work, stained glass, clocks, and even a 
spherical sundial. As the list in the Appendix will show, 
these alumni gifts include also loan and scholarship 
funds, gifts of books and scientific equipment, and, at 
Barnard College particularly, of shrubs and trees. 

The sculpture possessed by the University, more than 
one hundred pieces in all, includes French's Statue of 
Alma Mater, Barnard's Great God Pan, Partridge's 
Alexander Hamilton, and examples of the work of 
Saint-Gaudens, Ward, Couper, and Cb-^-rvliii. There are 
also good copies of classical statule r for which the 
University is indebted to Dr. J. Ackerman Coles, '64, 
and others. By order of the trustees, by gift, and in 
other ways, we have come to possess a large collection 
of portraits, scattered through various buildings, of 
Columbia dignitaries, by various hands and of varying 
merit. These paintings include works of Copley, Van- 
derlyn, Trumbull, Ingham, Eastman Johnson, Daniel 
Huntington, and, among later men, of Irving Wiles, 
F. D. Millet, W. T. Smedley, Sargent Kendall, MuUer- 
Ury, and J. W. Alexander. 

The corridors of the Barnard and Teachers College 
buildings have for some years had a good collection of 
engravings, photographs, and casts, and, through under- 
graduate gifts, Hamilton Hall is gradually acquiring an 
excellent collection of engravings for its walls. 

There are several good pieces of stained glass, the 
most striking being the LaFarge windows in St. Paul's 
Chapel. Indeed, all the equipment of the Chapel, from 



98 WAYS AND MEANS 

the Italian chancel furniture, and the fine organ, (pre- 
sented by George Foster Peabody and Charles Peabody,) 
down to the minutest details, were selected with the 
greatest care and insight, and as a whole and in all its 
parts the Chapel is one of the most precious artistic 
possessions of the University. 

Much attention has been given not only to the words, 
but to the form of the inscriptions upon the buildings, 
and no more beautiful example of an academic inscrip- 
tion can be found than that upon the portico of the 
Library : 

KINGS COLLEGE POUNDED IN THE PROVINCE OF NEW YORK 

BY ROYAL CHARTER IN THE REIGN OF GEORGE II 

PERPETUATED AS COLUMBIA COLLEGE BY THE PEOPLE OF 

vSfrjHE STATE OF NEW YORK 

WHEN irffiY BECAME FREE AND INDEPENDENT 

MAINTAINED AND CHERISHED FROM GENERATION TO 

GENERATION 

FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OP THE PUBLIC GOOD AND THE 

GLORY OF ALMIGHTY GOD 

MDCCCXCVI 

That extreme care in such matters is well worth while 
may be illustrated from some of the inscriptions as they 
were originally drawn. In the inscription over the door 
of Earl Hall, for example, the most conspicuous line, as 
originally sketched on the stone, read, " Erected that 
religion and learning may go," but that they were to 
go " hand in hand," was made clear only by a rearrange- 
ment of the lines. Similarly, the text from St. Paul, 
" Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship. Him declare 
I unto you," etc., was first laid out so that all that could 
readily be seen was " Ignorantly worship Him." 



IV 
EDUCATIONAL ORGANIZATION 

Graduate Faculties. Columbia College. Barnard College. Law, 
Mines, Engineering, Chemistry. Medicine. Architecture. Teach- 
ers College. Pharmacy. Journalism. Summer Session. Extension 
Teaching. Departments and Divisions. 

Before a brief summary of the different schools of the 
University is given, the reader is again reminded that 
the plan of this book is to emphasize the whole institu- 
tion rather than its separate parts, and also that those 
things which are characteristic of American colleges 
and professional schools in general are omitted. If, for 
instance, the Law School is dismissed with a page or so, 
it is not because the Law School is not an admirable 
institution with hopes for the future as high as its 
past has been distinguished, which is saying not a> 
little. 

The heart of a university, indeed what makes it a 
university, lies in the work of pushing out the frontiers 
of knowledge. It was primarily with this work in view 
that Columbia has developed what are very inaccurately 
known as its non-professional graduate schools. In the 
first place, they are not the only schools in the University 
for which a college degree is required, and more impor- 
tant they are not and can never be strictly non- 
professional. It is fortunately less true than formerly, 
but is still controlling for a majority of students, that 
the only way open for the scholar to make a living is 
to teach, and therefore these schools inevitably take to 
themselves the aspect of professional schools for the 

99 



100 EDUCATIONAL ORGANIZATION 

training of teachers. It would be as difficult, further- 
more, as it would be unprofitable, to press to a logical 
conclusion the distinction between professional and non- 
professional in the subjects of study themselves. Every 
fruitful field of study rightly tends to connect itself 
more and more closely with some profession. To name 
but a few, philosophy and psychology shade into edu- 
cation, English into journalism, political science into 
law, physics into engineering, biology into medicine. 
One of the most important functions of these schools 
lies in broadening and liberalizing the work of the pro- 
fessional schools and inspiring them with the spirit of 
research, while on the other hand the presence of the 
professional schools is a constant and necessary stimulus 
to them. 

The existence at Columbia of three separate faculties 
— of Political Science, Philosophy, and Pure Science — is 
based upon historical rather than upon logical grounds, 
and was the result of having to cope not with a theory, 
but with actual conditions of human jealousy and ri- 
valry. Although Barnard had urged the graduates of 
the College " to enter a path to which so few are spon- 
taneously inclined, the path of independent investigation 
with a view to enlarging the bounds of knowledge," and 
though he persuaded the trustees to establish fellow- 
ships, little in the way of organized advanced work was 
accomplished until in 1881, on the initiative of Professor 
Burgess, the School of Political Science was established, 
" designed to supplement the courses in Private Law 
with those studies in Ethics, History, and Public Law 
necessary to complete the science of jurisprudence." Its 
faculty has always been a powerful element in the Uni- 
versity policies. For nearly a quarter of a century it 
was small and compact, and because of this and of the 



GRADUATE FACULTIES 101 

fondness of its members for tobacco, it was known to 
the students as the " nicotine ring." About 1904 came 
a rapid growth in its membership to include the newer 
developments of social science, and a close alliance was 
formed with the New York School of Philanthropy. 

The first great victory of the *' University Party," 
after President Low's election, was the creation in 1890 
of a Faculty of Philosophy. It is characteristic of 
the brevity of an academic generation that of this origi- 
nal faculty but a single member is to-day in teaching 
service. Two years later the new university spirit had 
sufficiently overcome the old jealousies to permit the 
establishment of a Faculty of Pure Science, composed 
at first almost exclusively of professors in the School 
of Mines, with one man from the Medical School and two 
new appointees in zoology. Later came many new ap- 
pointments at Morningside, closer relations with the 
School of Medicine and with the museums of the city. 

The professional relations of the Faculty of Political 
Science have been largely with the Law School, those 
of the Faculty of Philosophy with Teachers College, and 
those of the Faculty of Pure Science with Medicine and 
Engineering. 

Under the eye of the University Council, and with no 
undue pressure to secure uniformity as to details, the 
three faculties went their several ways, leaving the de- 
partments generally in control of individual students, 
until the day arrived in 1909 when it was possible to 
unite them by the appointment of the senior dean, Pro- 
fessor Burgess, to serve as the dean of all three. Since 
then more attention has been given to the actual organi- 
zation of the advanced work ; and also to the apparently 
insoluble problem of defining where the jurisdiction of 
the department ends and that of the faculty begins. The 



102 EDUCATIONAL ORGANIZATION 

actual administration is unified by means of a joint 
committee on instruction which, as the retiring dean has 
pointed out, is an institution as unknown to the law of 
the University as the cabinet of the president is un- 
known to the constitutional law of the nation, but in 
its modest sphere equally as effective. 

Owing to the slowly dying doubts of our fathers as 
to the capacity of the female mind, the matter of ad- 
vanced instruction for women has furnished one of the 
most complex problems in the development of these 
schools. A woman student received the degree of doctor 
of philosophy in mathematics in 1886, but it was not 
until some years later that women who had already re- 
ceived the bachelor's degree began to apply in numbers 
for admission. They were at first permitted to enter 
University classes under the non-committal title of 
auditors, were examined as Barnard College students, 
and received degrees on the formal recommendation of 
the Barnard faculty. The appointment by Barnard 
College, beginning in 1895, of productive scholars of 
distinction competent to offer courses which the men stu- 
dents desired was made the basis by President Low, who 
had personally provided the funds for two of these ap- 
pointments, of urging the graduate faculties to give 
more generous treatment to women students, and five 
years later women holding the first degree were admit- 
ted to graduate courses as regular students of the Uni- 
versity. The close relations between the so-called gradu- 
ate faculties and the professional schools of medicine, law, 
and engineering, which do not admit women students — 
professional and non-professional students frequently at- 
tending the same classes — still hampers the women in 
certain fields, but in general their opportunity for gradu- 
ate work is now as broad as that of the men. 



GRADUATE FACULTIES 103 

The degree of Ph.D. has been conferred in the United 
States for about fifty years. For many years Colum- 
bia's contributions to the list of doctors, though some- 
times individually important, were few in number. The 
broadened opportunities coming after 1890, and particu- 
larly the establishment of twenty-four fellowships, soon 
brought about a change, and Columbia has conferred 
more doctorates than any American university within 
the past sixteen years, over seven hundred in all. The 
master's degree, which nominally requires one year of 
residence instead of three, is even more popular, and more 
than five hundred masters were created at the commence- 
ment of 1913. 

The total registration of these three schools is by far 
the largest in the United States, the gross registration for 
1912-13 being 2,241. It is significant of the close inter- 
relations between the different parts of the University 
that, of these students, 445 were also registered in pro- 
fessional schools of the University, 168 in theological 
schools or the School of Philanthropy, and 83 were junior 
officers. In considering these large numbers, it must be 
remembered that, owing to its position in the city of 
New York, the University attracts to its graduate schools 
a large number of teachers in active service and others 
who can give but a part of their time to study, a class 
including representatives both of the best and of the 
worst type of student in the graduate schools. 

The distribution of students among subjects is more 
even at Columbia than is often the ease. In more than 
sixteen different departments there are twenty-five stu- 
dents or more offering a major subject. Classified by 
divisions in the order of student preference, political 
science leads, followed by the modern languages, edu- 
cation, philosophy, biology, and chemistry. 



104 EDUCATIONAL ORGANIZATION 

The immense numbers and the fact that students are 
attracted to these schools for reasons as wide apart as 
the poles mean that the problems of their administra- 
tion are destined to be difficult and pressing for many- 
years to come. Under the new dean, Professor F. J. E. 
Woodbridge, they are being grappled with fearlessly and 
intelligently. It is recognized that admission to can- 
didacy to a higher degree should depend not merely upon 
college graduation, but upon special preparation for 
advanced work in some particular field, a very difficult 
matter to ascertain in advance. Many of those admitted 
even under these conditions should be weeded out be- 
fore the final examination, when the temptation to be 
kind usually overcomes the duty to be stern. Progress 
will be slow and painful, furthermore, while identical 
machinery is used to deal with the school teacher whose 
promotion depends upon the acquisition of a master's 
degree, with professional students desiring to broaden 
their horizon, and with the many who are desirous and 
the few who are capable of devoting their lives to the 
increase of the world 's store of worth-while knowledge. 

To the inquirers of 1857, one frank critic stated that 
in reality Columbia College was little more than an ap- 
panage to the more popular grammar school. The gram- 
mar school, however, departed and the College remains. 
Thirty years later the College had apparently become 
something like a vermiform appendix in the organiza- 
tion of professional schools, and Barnard had come re- 
luctantly to the conclusion that the public interest de- 
manded the giving up of undergraduate work. A mem- 
ber of the Faculty of Political Science has told me that, 
if it had not been for the support of that faculty at a 
critical moment, Columbia College would have ceased 



COLUMBIA COLLEGE 105 

to exist. To-day the College is recognized as having 
an essential function in the work of the University. It 
is growing rapidly, having now more than nine hundred 
students. Though closely allied to the graduate schools 
through the departmental organization, and to the pro- 
fessional schools through the combined courses, it has 
nevertheless retained its own personality. It enjoys at 
the same time the stimulus which comes to teacher and 
student alike from contact with men of world-wide re- 
nown and with a strong body of professional and gradu- 
ate students. Its individuality has been emphasized 
since 1907 by the possession of its own building. Before 
that time French had been taught in the bookstore, 
English and mathematics in the physics building, his- 
tory next the lunchroom, and its official home was in a 
dark and dismal basement. A test of the present vital- 
ity of the College is its ability to absorb into the student 
life each year a larger number of students admitted to 
the upper classes, proportionately to the total registra- 
tion, than any other institution of the country. 

Never has a college been more frequently pulled up 
by the roots. Between 1763, when Myles Cooper revised 
the curriculum to make it correspond with that of his 
own Oxford college, until 1905, when the minimum re- 
quirements still in force were adopted, the records show 
no fewer than eleven revisions of its program. Most 
of them, since the premature experiment of 1857, have 
been backings and fillings as to the elective system. The 
revision of 1905, based upon a study started by Presi- 
dent Butler's first report, was more fundamental, since 
it defined the University policy as to the combination 
of collegiate and professional school work, and placed the 
emphasis in college work upon quality rather than on 
time spent in residence. Columbia was one of the first to 



106 EDUCATIONAL ORGANIZATION 

adopt the principle, at present widely followed, of giving 
extra credit in some form or other for high standing and 
a corresponding penalty for too great a number of low 
passing grades. The earnest student found a new in- 
centive for good work, and what is perhaps equally im- 
portant, in view of the manifold temptations for soldier- 
ing that beset the modem collegian, the idler discovered 
that the opportunity for lax scholarship had been very 
much curtailed. 

Proposals have since been made for further radical 
changes in the program, which includes a consider- 
able core of prescribed work in language, mathematics, 
science, history, and philosophy. A careful analytical 
study of the actual performance of the last senior class, 
however, undertaken at the behest of the faculty, shows 
that the proportion of students continuing subjects be- 
yond a prescribed course is large enough to disprove 
the argument that a prescribed course per se makes 
the subject distasteful and discourages its further pur- 
suit. It shows, further, that the proportion of students 
who carry elective courses in a given field beyond two 
terms is high enough to disprove the charge that there 
is any general tendency towards scattering. And, 
finally, the study makes clear that the student generally 
chooses wisely as to the subjects upon which to con- 
centrate. 

It may be stated as a general principle that the more 
a faculty actually knows about the students and their 
interests the less likelihood there is of elaborate revisions 
based upon a priori reasoning. 

In Columbia College, English is by far the most gen- 
erally followed subject, with one-fifth of the total regis- 
tration. The next is physical education, prescribed for 
underclassmen, and then follow in the order named 



COLUMBIA COLLEGE 107 

history, mathematics, philosophy, Romance and Germanic 
languages, chemistry, politics, Latin, and psychology. 

Within recent years the College administration has de- 
voted its attention particularly to efficiency in teaching, 
to personal care for all students, and to the administra- 
tion of the spirit rather than the letter of the law. In 
general, less attention has been paid to the minimum re- 
quirements and more to furnishing opportunities for the 
exceptional student. 

Since 1906 an attempt has been made to limit the mem- 
bership of the faculty to the men primarily engaged 
in college teaching, but for historic and sentimental 
reasons this has as yet been but imperfectly accom- 
plished. 

In his recent " swing " around the academic circle, 
one of the things that impressed Dr. Slosson most 
vividly was the general waste of time and energy in the 
ordinary collegiate instruction. Much has been accom- 
plished at Columbia to improve conditions in these re- 
gards since the organization in 1907 of a committee 
on instruction of the faculty. Under the leadership 
of its first chairman, the late Professor G. R. Carpen- 
ter, who literally gave his life to this work, a largely 
successful struggle was maintained with departments 
whose primary interests were in advanced work. Small 
sections, carefully planned courses, and intelligent grad- 
ing for college students were insisted upon, and a de- 
vice for a logical and honest check on absences was dis- 
covered. There is always a danger lest the newer forms 
of study which relate to the intellectual development 
of mankind make too light a demand upon the student's 
mental activity. A definite attempt has been made to 
increase this demand without overloading the course 
with trivial and uninteresting drudgery. That the at- 



108 EDUCATIONAL ORGANIZATION 

tempt has not been altogether unsuccessful is shown 
by the senior votes, which place the prescribed course 
in history at the head of the list alike for difficulty 
and for general usefulness. That the successful ex- 
perience of th^ natural sciences is leading to the use 
of laboratory methods in these other fields has already 
been mentioned. In addition to its work with the depart- 
ments, the committee, of which the dean is now at the 
head, makes a careful study of the individual pro- 
grams, prescribes two sequences of study for each 
student, and executes a rigorous weeding out of the 
unfit and the idle. It is often a real kindness to a boy 
to bring his college career to a close. One is reminded 
of the Delphic saying that the colleges turn out some 
of the best men in the country. The important thing 
is to be sure that it is not the wrong boy who is turned 
out, and to this problem the committee gives careful 
attention. The grades of each student are reported fre- 
quently, are watched like the temperature record in a 
hospital, and made the basis not only for official warn- 
ing but, what are usually more effective, congratula- 
tions upon improved work. 

In the vigorous words of the president, " the notion 
that an institution of learning could not or should not 
concern itself with the character and conduct of the 
students outside the classroom or off the campus is bosh ; 
all of the boy goes to college, not a part of him only." 
The care of the whole student is fortunately becoming 
typical of the good American colleges and it is not 
necessary to go into particular details as to the efforts 
made to that end at Columbia. The professors and the 
dean endeavor to be available at all times to the students 
and, of the 5,700 visits from students and their parents 
and advisers to the latter last year, more than half re- 



COLUMBIA COLLEGE 109 

lated to matters not having to do with the formal cur- 
riculum. An endeavor is made also to learn just as 
much as possible about each student. The careful work 
of the committee on admissions enables the dean to 
start with a fairly complete knowledge of what the boy 
has accomplished at school and what his teachers think 
of him, and his record at college is checked in other 
matters than the formal grades. The negative side of 
student records is often of considerable importance. 
The boy who is not in any fraternity and who does not 
belong to other student organizations, who is the only 
boy from his particular school, is pretty sure to be a 
lonely boy and as such needs all the care the college can 
give him. It is regarded as the duty of the college to 
see that the choice of diversions for such a boy is not 
limited to the unwholesome and unprofitable, but in- 
cludes also the wholesome and the profitable. 

On the other hand, the College endeavors not to 
overdo this matter. The business of school and college 
education is the making of boys into men and, as in 
the modern practice of medicine, the job is best done 
when the patient does most of it himself. The impor- 
tant thing is to develop in so far as possible the stu- 
dent's own sense of responsibility, and for this reason 
the system of advice to students at Columbia is frankly 
an insurance that each student has someone to whom 
he has the right to turn if he cares to do so, rather 
than a system of close supervision. The very definite 
limit as to the amount of work of this kind that a fac- 
ulty can be counted upon to do, willingly and effi- 
ciently, is, by the way, an important factor in this 
matter of student advisers. 

President Lowell's statement, that by the free use of 
competition athletics have beaten scholarship out of 



110 EDUCATIONAL ORGANIZATION 

sight in the estimation of the community at large and 
in the regard of the college student body, may need some 
qualification, but there is no doubt that one of the 
things for a live college to do is to devise methods of 
intellectual competition, and particularly such methods 
as will not only hold the students already turned to- 
wards scholarship, but will entice into that field students 
not already interested but of potential capacity. As 
early as 1785 public examinations w^ere arranged to 
which the men of letters of the city were invited, which 
" should encourage the industry and emulation of the 
students," and honorary premiums were distributed to 
the most deserving. The revision of 1810 was for the 
announced purpose of enticing to laudable emulation no 
less than for preventing and punishing of faults. From 
then on various devices were tried. All, however, were 
directly connected with the regular program and, as 
has been pointed out, a subject once in the curriculum 
tends to lose all emotional interest for the student. In 
1909, the committee on instruction recommended that 
the College should profit by the example of the English 
universities, where it seems to be better understood that 
culture is one of those things which may be and usually 
is lost in the conscious search for it. Accordingly, a 
program was devised upon which the student could 
enter at the end of his first year, which contained much 
less regular work, with fewer prescriptions and other 
regulations, and concentrated the student's attention 
upon two or three subjects for which much outside read- 
ing and informal conference were required. Compre- 
hensive oral examinations upon the work of three years 
were established, and those successfully completing this 
program received a degree with honors. The system 
is not yet in permanent working form, but so far the re- 



COLUMBIA COLLEGE 111 

suits have been most promising. The number of stu- 
dents electing to study for honors is rapidly increasing, 
and there is no doubt as to their intellectual interest 
and rivalry. 

In view of the present rapid rate of growth, it is very 
possible that a limitation of numbers in the near fu- 
ture will enable the College to strike a more defi- 
nite note. While doubtless the old New York stock will 
always be represented, Columbia is not likely ever again 
to be a fashionable college 'per se, and the temptation is 
lessening to make it too much like every other college in 
the details of its student life and interest. Efficient 
entrance machinery cuts out the hopelessly incompetent. 
The different strains in the membership, particularly 
the boys of various foreign stocks, the influx of freshmen 
from out of town, and the students from other colleges, 
all unite in producing the social diversity which is a 
factor often unappreciated in college life. There are 
those who believe that the future of the colleges in the 
urban universities will lie in making an increasingly 
strong appeal not to all boys, but to the boys who are 
willing to ask frankly the question as to what one pays 
for the luxury of country-club existence, who have no 
desire to prepare themselves for a career of being 
amused, and who wish to begin to test their capacity 
with rivals of like mind not in the professional or 
graduate school, but in the college. 

The present registration in the College is about 900, 
and the total number of living alumni more than 2,800. 

To the students of educational history no part of 
Columbia University will be of greater interest than 
Barnard College. It was founded, under most discour- 
aging conditions, to meet a real need of the community 



112 EDUCATIONAL ORGANIZATION 

— a first-rate college, primarily for the girls of New 
York City. In its organization to-day it is furnishing 
a model to women's colleges all over the country, and 
particularly in the Southern States, of a complete and 
independent college as an integral member of the uni- 
versity organization. The policy of growth by treaty 
has been discussed from the university standpoint. 
From the point of view of the independent col- 
lege, it cannot be better set forth than in the words 
of the present Dean of Barnard, Miss Virginia C. 
Gildersleeve : 

" The College has succeeded to a considerable extent 
in creating and preserving the feeling of individuality 
and personal unity characteristic of a separate college, 
and at the same time profiting by the inspiration, the 
university standards of scholarship and personnel, and 
the hundred incidental advantages derived from mem- 
bership in Columbia University. Our individuality as 
a distinct institution gives us an advantage, I think, 
over the women undergraduates in the great coeduca- 
tional universities ; and most assuredly our connection 
with Columbia gives us an advantage over the separate 
women's colleges. Inconvenient though it often is to 
have our finances separate from those of Columbia, 
I feel that on the whole the fact of our distinct charter 
and corporation is valuable in that it aids in pre- 
serving for us a sense of separate individuality. Were 
it not for this there might be greater danger of our 
being absorbed too completely in the vast university 
machine. ' ' 

The College owes its existence as it does its name 
to the brave struggle made by President Barnard 
against indifference and distrust regarding the higher 
education of women. The movement which led to its 
actual establishment has been described in the chapter 



BARNARD COLLEGE 113 

upon that great leader. Shortly before his death, in 
1888, the original niggardly resolution of the Columbia 
trustees, which it will be remembered made no provi- 
sion for teaching women but only for examination, was 
broadened to authorize the establishment of an actual 
institution of learning, which should involve Columbia 
in no pecuniary responsibilities, and be managed by 
a corporation with trustees, constitution, and regu- 
lations to be approved by the trustees of Columbia; 
which might have buildings for instruction only, not 
for residence; whose students should be taught exclu- 
sively by professors and instructors of Columbia; and 
whose connection with Columbia could be terminated 
if unsatisfactory. 

It was not a very generous treaty on the part of 
the trustees, but it was sufficient for the purpose and a 
great advance upon the older agreement. The prob- 
lem of the new college, which was founded the follow- 
ing year, was twofold : to recommend itself to Columbia 
on the one hand, and to the public on the other. To 
both problems the trustees and teachers set themselves 
vigorously. Their success in the former was shown by 
the willingness of the University to entrust the College 
with the difficult problem of graduate instruction for 
women, while its own faculties were being educated 
up to the point of taking it upon themselves, and by 
the agreement of ,1900, whereby, as its Provost has 
pointed out, Barnard became no longer an appanage, 
but an independent, self-supporting principality in a 
congress of states. Since 1900 its position has been 
unique among women 's colleges, in that, while independ- 
ent and interested in its own welfare, it has shared the 
responsibilities and ideals of a g^reat university. The 
rapidity of this development is shown by the fact that, 



114 EDUCATIONAL ORGANIZATION 

of more than one thousand alumnae, all but a score are 
living. 

A cynical observer of the higher education of women 
has said that apparently Jack and Jill must be edu- 
cated exactly alike, particularly Jill. Barnard, how- 
ever, has not desired nor has the University insisted 
upon an identity between its program and that of 
Columbia College. The combined college and profes- 
sional course has been less developed, since there are 
at present fewer opportunities open to women for 
professional study. A start, however, has been made at 
Teachers College, and in Journalism and Architecture. 
Further development is a problem for the future, both 
to the University and to Barnard. As at Columbia Col- 
lege, a revised program was adopted in 1905, but, 
while the two are similar, they have important differ- 
ences. For example, the B.S. course at Barnard is more 
carefully thought out and more thorough in its em- 
phasis upon laboratory science than is that at the men 's 
college. Like Columbia, Barnard is working upon the 
problem of emphasizing distinction in study, but along 
different lines. 

As to Barnard's having recommended herself to the 
public, there can be no question. Under the leadership 
first of Miss Ella Weed and then, from 1894 until 1900, 
of Miss Emily James Smith (]\Irs. George Haven Put- 
nam) and Miss Laura D. Gill, 1901-07, the growth in 
numbers has been steady and it is now rapid. There are 
at present 636 students. It has been pointed out that 
Barnard can never be like a large countrj-- college, nor 
have the same sort of college life, but the students there 
feel that its difference from other girls' colleges is in 
many ways a thing to be proud of and that, through its 
contact with a great university and a great city, it can 



BARNARD COLLEGE 115 

and does develop as fine and sane a student life as can 
be found at any American college. The prestige of the 
teachers is shown by the constant attempts both within 
and without the University to steal them from Barnard. 
Its wealth, as has been shown in the previous chapter, 
has grown from nothing in 1889 to $4,335,503.55 in 1913, 
and, although this is far from sufficient to meet its pres- 
ent needs, Barnard has always succeeded in getting help 
when she needed and deserved it, so that there is every 
prospect that the additional funds will be forthcoming. 
Indeed, the alumnae are at present vigorously engaged 
upon a campaign for a fund of two million dollars for 
buildings and endowment to commemorate the twenty- 
fifth birthday of the College in October, 1914. 

In the teaching of law, * ' the secreted wisdom of hu- 
man society applied to its current affairs, ' ' Columbia was 
a pioneer. Chancellor Kent 's famous Commentaries were 
developed from his lectures to her students. In 1859, 
Theodore W. Dwight, one of the great teachers of all 
time, founded the Columbia Law School. Dicey and 
Bryce have both borne witness to the nation-wide influ- 
ence of this extraordinary man. For nearly twenty years 
he gave all the instruction himself and took upon him- 
self all financial responsibility. When in 1876 the trus- 
tees took over its control, there were in the Law School 
no fewer than 573 students, an amazing number even 
for days when there were no entrance examinations, and 
when graduation was equivalent to admission to prac- 
tice. The march of progress, however, is inexorable, 
overriding the views of any one man, no matter how 
distinguished in personality and devoted in service, and 
the time came when the trustees had to choose between 
Professor Dwight 's method of teaching law — which de- 



IIG EDUCATIONAL ORGANIZATION 

pended far more than he himself realized upon his own 
skill and personality — and methods more in accord with 
modern university policies and aims. Largely upon the 
initiative of Stephen P. Nash of the Board of Trustees, 
and against Professor Dwight's judgment, it was de- 
cided in 1888 to lengthen and modify the course. In 
1891, Professor Dwight resigned and what was prac- 
tically a new school was organized under the deanship 
of Professor Keener, who had been a member of the Har- 
vard law faculty. The five points which distinguished 
the new school from the old were, first, three years in- 
stead of two ; second, the concurrent pursuit of several 
subjects; third, a distinct increase in classroom hours 
and discouragement of outside office practice; fourth, 
an elective system of study in the upper years ; fifth, the 
combination of public and private law and provision not 
only for teaching but for research. 

The changes aroused a storm of protest, particularly 
among the alumni of the old school, who were to a 
man Professor Dwight's devoted disciples, and the new 
regime started with a heavy handicap of unpopularity 
and had emphatically to justify its existence to the com- 
munity. In 1899 it had obtained a sufficiently strong 
position to decide that, from 1903 on, admission should 
depend upon at least three years of college work. Be- 
ginning with Professor Keener 's withdrawal into active 
practice in 1901, the progress of the school was checked 
by a number of changes in the staff. Far more than in 
the non-professional faculties, the teachers of a pro- 
fessional school, particularly one in a large city, are 
under constant and alluring temptation to leave the 
ranks, and the peculiarly personal character of instruc- 
tion in a law school renders it important that its even- 
ness and continuity should not be broken by frequent 



LAW 117 

changes in the corps of teachers. Since the appointment 
in 1910 of Harlan F. Stone, the first graduate of the 
school to be its dean, the staff has been permanent and 
its members give their main attention to law teaching, 
with the result that the school has grown rapidly in 
numbers and prestige, and will doubtless soon have to 
face the problem of limiting its numbers. 

Its method of work is described by the much misunder- 
stood title " case system." Briefly stated, the method 
consists in the student's working out for himself, under 
the guidance of the instructor, the principles of law from 
decided cases, which of course are the ultimate authori- 
tative source of all legal principles. Formal lectures 
are not generally given. The method of most instruc- 
tion is Socratic; that is to say, the principles are ex- 
tracted from the cases by the student under the more or 
less skillful questioning of the instructor. 

Owing to its system of instruction, its cosmopolitan 
character, and its close touch with actual professional 
conditions, the school exerts a most important influ- 
ence upon the legal profession throughout the United 
States. Less than half of the 472 students are registered 
as from New York City. The others come from thirty- 
nine different States and four foreign countries. The 
living alumni of the school number more than 4,500. 

Perhaps the most significant single difference between 
the universities of Germany and America is the pres- 
ence here of engineering and the engineering type of 
mind among teachers and students. The engineer has 
been called the dynamic component in human nature, 
the new force which is accelerating the wheels of prog- 
ress, and his profession has been termed the art of 
directing the great sources of power in nature to the use 



118 EDUCATIONAL ORGANIZATION 

and convenience of man. The presence at Columbia for 
half a century of both professors and students of engi- 
neering has certainly had a very great influence upon 
the institution as a whole. 

When the School of Mines, the first of its kind in 
this country, was founded in 1863, three young enthusi- 
asts — Professors Chandler, Egleston, and Vinton — took 
the entire responsibility for its finances. To the original 
three were soon added certain colleagues from the Col- 
lege and new appointees, notably Professor Trowbridge, 
who served as professor of engineering for many years. 
The first alumnus to receive a professorship was H. S. 
Munroe, still in service as the senior professor in the 
University. 

The course of study, which was characteristic from 
the first in being composed exclusively of professional 
subjects, was lengthened from three years to four in 
1868. A program with emphasis on metallurgy was 
added the same year, A course leading to a degree in 
civil engineering was established a year later, electrical 
engineering in 1889, mechanical in 1897, and chemical 
in 1905, a modest total when it is remembered that 
there are twenty-seven known species of engineering 
degrees conferred in the United States. The School 
of Architecture and the Faculty of Pure Science, both 
now independent, were originally founded in the School 
of Mines. Among the 650 and more students to-day, 
the most popular course is still the original one, that 
of mining engineering, followed in order by civil, me- 
chanical, chemical, electrical, and metallurgical. Me- 
chanical and chemical have both outstripped electrical 
engineering within the past few years, and at present 
chemical engineering is growing most rapidly. From 
the establishment of summer work in mining, in 1877, 



MINES, ENGINEERING, CHEMISTRY 119 

strong emphasis has always been placed upon the prac- 
tical work of the students, and a vital feature of the 
programs of all candidates for an engineering degree 
is the summer camp of surveying at Morris, Conn., 
where three hundred men work annually. 

Probably the first example of taking a man from a 
purely executive post and appointing him to a position 
of academic responsibility was in the selection in 1905 
of the Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds, Mr. 
F. A. Goetze, to be Dean of the Faculty of Applied Sci- 
ence. Under the new leadership, there was a vigorous 
improvement not only in teaching, but in clearing out 
duplication of effort. This had grown up through the 
overlapping of the several engineering fields, until no 
student could properly perform the stated requirements. 
These were first simplified and then honestly adminis- 
tered. The first year's work in the different courses 
was made uniform, a step without which further ad- 
vances could not have been taken. The next step was 
a fundamental one. It had become evident that, with 
the rapid growth of engineering schools based upon high- 
school preparation, Columbia's best contribution to the 
nation would be in the special type of instruction which 
could be given only to men who were willing to lay a 
broad foundation for it. After careful consideration, 
it was resolved to reduce the course to three years, but 
to require for admission a preparation of at least three 
years' serious college study, in which fully half the 
time should be devoted to sequential work in the under- 
lying subjects of mathematics, physics, and chemistry, 
and the remainder to training in history, philosophy, 
English, and modern languages, and special preparatory 
work in drafting and the like. Columbia College has 
organized a program devised to meet the particular 



120 EDUCATIONAL ORGANIZATION 

needs of this plan, which is to go into effect in 1915, 
upon the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the 
founding of the School of Mines. 

There is considerable rivalry between Columbia and 
the University of Pennsylvania as to which deserves the 
honor of being the pioneer in medical instruction in 
America. Apparently King's College was the first to 
organize a medical department, and the College of Phila- 
delphia the first to grant medical degrees. Our medical 
department was resuscitated with the academic depart- 
ment after the Revolution, but in 1807 an independent 
College of Physicians and Surgeons was organized, 
which soon took the lead from the older school. The 
two were merged in 1813. The connection with Colum- 
bia was re-established loosely in 1860 and absolutely in 
1891. 

Until 1887 the College had a strong reputation as a 
first-rate school of the old theoretical type, proprietary 
in management, and with haphazard hospital connec- 
tions. In 1887 came the generous gift of the Vander- 
bilt family, which made provision for laboratory in- 
struction, and three years later the merger of its inde- 
pendent charter with that of Columbia University. 
Scientifically its most notable achievement had been the 
organization, about the middle of the century, of a 
department of physiology under John C. Dalton, who 
was the pioneer in this field in America, and a depart- 
ment of pathology under Francis Delafield, with mod- 
est laboratories supported by the alumni. 

In comparing law and medicine, it should be remem- 
bered that the Law School is approximately what it 
was in 1895, whereas the Medical School is hardly rec- 
ognizable as the same institution. Instead of being, as 



MEDICINE 121 

the records seem to show, one hundrfeS and fifty and 
sixty years old respectively, the Columbia Law School 
is, say, twenty-one or twenty-two, and the College of 
Physicians and Surgeons is barely ten. Pedagogically 
speaking, medicine is by far the younger and less de- 
veloped. 

Professor Lee has defined the policy of the College 
as one of conservative leadership, and the conservative 
part of this definition was never more clearly felt than 
in the decade between 1890 and 1900, when, under the 
terms of the merger, all initiative with regard to 
medical matters was to lie not in the trustees of the 
University, but in the faculty of medicine, which had 
come over intact from the old order. The dean, Dr. 
J. W. McLane, who had been president of the independ- 
ent College, and his colleagues were satisfied with things 
as they were. The school was the largest in the coun- 
try, having reached its maximum membership of 809 
in 1902. In spite, therefore, of the establishment of 
the Johns Hopkins Medical School and a much needed 
local rivalry which came from the establishment of the 
Cornell Medical School in New York City in 1898, little 
was done until the end of the ten-year period. The 
trustees of the University were then in a position to 
take hold and, against the recommendations of the dean 
and of several of the older professors, instituted certain 
fundamental changes in the school, in order to bring 
about the change from the old teaching of medicine to 
the new. This change has been summarized as follows: 
" "What the medical student got at his school in the old 
times was a little practical knowledge won at first hand 
in the dissecting room and at the bedside, a great many 
talks about what his professors had seen or read about, 
and much advice about what he had better do under 



122 EDUCATIONAL ORGANIZATION 

certain specified conditions. . . . To-day, the burden of 
medical teaching lies in the endeavor to afford the 
student the opportunity to see for himself the things 
and processes which concern the human body both in 
health and disease, and to teach him to study these 
logically in all the lights which any phase of science 
may throw upon them." 

Before the reorganization took place the school was 
still based upon a pattern which had descended from 
the seven traditional chairs of the old proprietary school, 
and which gave no adequate representation to the labo- 
ratory sciences. The year 1903 was a notable one; the 
department of surgery was reorganized and an entirely 
new department of pharmacology and therapeutics was 
established, with Dr. S. W. Lambert, the present dean, 
at its head. In these radical changes some mistakes 
may have been made, but the trustees worked im- 
partially and sincerely and something was absolutely 
necessary to put the school upon the basis of a uni- 
versity department. Dr. James W. McLane, however, 
retired, after a faculty service of thirty-five years, and 
several of the older professors went with him. 

The new dean was the first to protest publicly against 
the organization known as the private quiz, which every 
ambitious student, if he desired a hospital appointment 
after graduation, was practically forced to join at a 
heavy expense in order to get the individual teaching 
which the school itself did not provide. This quiz, it 
may be said, was the lineal descendant of the old plan, 
formerly prescribed by law, which assigned a preceptor 
to each student of medicine. By improving the actual 
instruction in the school, the quiz was made no longer 
necessary and has practically disappeared. Another ex- 
ample of how recent is the placing of medical education 



MEDICINE 123 

upon a plane with the other sciences, is the fact that 
until 1903 there was no reference library for the 
students. It was not until 1910 that the new require- 
ment of at least two years' special college preparation 
went into effect, insuring good material upon which to 
work. As a matter of fact, the majority of students are 
now college graduates. 

In recent years the advances have been steady. In 
1909 the Avhole series of sciences which had grown out 
of the original chair of pathology were reorganized, as 
was the department of medicine. In speaking of the new 
order of things at the Medical School, particular credit 
should be given to a group of younger men who have 
sacrificed advancement in practice for the purely scien- 
tific side of their profession. The high repute in which 
the school is now held throughout the country is in large 
measure due to the researches and publications of these 
men. The opportunities for further research have been 
greatly increased by the bequest of the late George 
Crocker, the income of whose bequest of nearly $2,000,000 
is to be used first for the stamping out of cancer and, 
when that problem is solved, to fight other ills that 
flesh is heir to. 

One of the worst features of the old order of things 
was the limited hospital opportunities open to students. 
These depended wholly upon the appointment to hon- 
orary professorships of members of the staffs of the 
different hospitals, entirely regardless of their skill and 
interest in teaching. Under such conditions the actual 
hospital opportunities of the students were naturally 
spasmodic and slight. The Sloane Maternity Hospital 
and the Vanderbilt Clinic gave excellent opportunities, 
so far as they went, but they did not cover general hos- 
pital experience. In 1905, Dr. Lambert recommended 



124 EDUCATIONAL ORGANIZATION 

the adoption of the English system of clinical clerk- 
ships whereby each student, during his course, actually 
lives and serves in a hospital for several months, and this 
system was adopted by the College four years later. It 
was appropriate historically that Columbia should take 
a leading position in this matter, for it was one of the 
professors of King's College, Samuel Bard, who first 
insisted that one of the necessary features of a school 
of medicine was a hospital in which medicine might be 
studied and taught, and, when the New York Hospital 
was organized in 1791, Bard was instrumental in having 
provision made for the medical students to attend its 
practice. 

Public opinion, as President Butler has said, has moved 
rapidly during the past few years in regard to the inter- 
dependence of medical schools and hospitals. It is now 
pretty clear to all enlightened hospital managers that 
the mere care of the ill and suffering is only one-half 
of a hospital's business. The other half is to assist in 
the study of disease and in the better training of those 
upon whom is to devolve the responsibility for the pre- 
vention and cure of disease hereafter. In 1911 came 
to Columbia a new example of increased opportunity by 
a treaty of most far-reaching importance. Mr. Edward 
S. Harkness offered to provide the means for erecting 
upon the land of the Presbyterian Hospital a surgical 
pavilion, containing 150 beds, equipped with modem 
appliances and the laboratories for advanced research. 
He further offered to the Hospital, on behalf of 
an unnamed donor, money and securities estimated to 
be of a value of $1,300,000, the income to be used toward 
the support of the scientific and educational work con- 
nected with the Hospital. The University agreed to meet 
all the cost of carrying on the educational work of the 



MEDICINE 125 

Hospital, provided that the income of the fund men- 
tioned above should be applied to whatever extent might 
be necessary for this purpose. The University and the 
Hospital are to share the cost of operation and main- 
tenance of the hospital buildings. 

This plan should add greatly to the opportunities of 
students not only in medicine and surgery, but in the 
laboratory sciences of pathology, bacteriology, chemistry, 
and physiology. Both parties are moving cautiously in 
the development of this scheme, fraught as it is with 
tremendous possibilities for the future of medical educa- 
tion in the country. The professors of surgery, medicine, 
and pathology are, however, already in charge of their 
respective fields at the hospital, and all three are limiting 
their activities to teaching, to the treatment of patients 
in the hospital, and to research. 

The new order at the College of Physicians and Sur- 
geons, which it must be remembered is without endow- 
ment for general purposes, costs the trustees of the Uni- 
versity more than one hundred thousand dollars a year. 
The increased entrance requirements, a raising of fees, 
and the uncertainty among the alumni of the old school as 
to the new plans, and as to the wisdom of advising young 
friends to register there, reduced the number of students 
from 809 in 1902 to 330 six years later. Since then the 
school has been growing steadily, though slowly, and 
now numbers 369. The graduates of 1913 brought the 
total number of alumni up to 7,843. 

The College of Physicians and Surgeons seems des- 
tined to become in the future largely a finishing school. 
The costs for clinical instruction are so high and the 
opportunity for it depends so absolutely upon large 
populations that many of the smaller universities, and 
even a university as large as the University of Wiseon- 



126 EDUCATIONAL ORGANIZATION 

sin, limit their medical work to the first two years, and 
are sending their students for the two final or clinical 
years to such institutions as Columbia. The number of 
students who go abroad to complete their medical edu- 
cation is likely to decrease. In the judgment of Dr. 
Lambert, the best medical schools in America are to-day 
better than are those of Germany in laboratory facili- 
ties and are rapidly becoming as good clinical schools 
as those of France and Great Britain. 

"William R. "Ware, who was called to Columbia in 1881 
to start a department of architecture under the School 
of Mines, had had fifteen years' experience as head of 
the School of Architecture of the Massachusetts Insti- 
tute of Technology. He is grouped with Hunt and 
Richardson as one of the men who did most for Ameri- 
can architecture during the dark days in the middle of 
the last century. Just as Professor Dwight was in 
himself the School of Law, so for many years was Pro- 
fessor "Ware the School of Architecture. He was not 
only one of Columbia's most devoted and distinguished 
professors, but one of her most picturesque and lovable 
men. 

In his first report, Professor "Ware pointed out the 
importance of creating for the work in architecture an 
atmosphere of its o\\ti, favorable to the harmonious 
development of its own students. Little by little he 
succeeded in loosing the bond which held architecture 
to the other departments in the School of Mines, and 
later carried this plan to the point of isolation from 
the general university interests. Under Professor Ware, 
and after his retirement in 1903, under his suc- 
cessor and pupil. Professor Hamlin, the historical and 
critical side of the architect's training was given first 



ARCHITECTUEE 127 

attention, although in later years more and more atten- 
tion came to be given to design. Under the new director, 
Mr. Austin W. Lord, the field of architectural design 
is, it is clear to see, to have pre-eminence, and, since 
his appointment in 1912, the course of study has already 
been considerably modified to this end. The students 
take kindly to the new emphasis. Indeed, it has been 
found necessary to institute certain eligibility rules as 
to standing in other subjects, as a basis for entry in 
the competitions in design which have been borrowed 
from the Paris Ecole des Beaux- Arts. 

The school suffers from the presence of an academic 
bimetallism. Of the 143 students, less than one-third 
are candidates for an academic degree. Most of the oth- 
ers, admitted upon a comparatively low entrance stand- 
ard, are working toward a non-committal certificate of 
proficiency. 

In the university organization the School of Archi- 
tecture is now in a somewhat anomalous position. With 
the department of music it was set apart, in 1906, as 
the nucleus of a Faculty of Fine Arts, but apart from 
the excellent work of Professor Dow in Teachers Col- 
lege, and of members of the classical departments in 
archaeology, and some tentative steps toward landscape 
design, the other branches of the fine arts are not yet 
represented. This, however, is a condition which the 
trustees of the University and, indeed, the public at 
large cannot complacently regard as permanent. 

Even before President Barnard's great service, Colum- 
bia, through its graduates, had had an important share 
in the development of the profession of education in 
America. Alexander Hamilton was largely instrumental 
in organizing the University of the State of New York. 



128 EDUCATIONAL ORGANIZATION 

To DeWitt Clinton we owe the founding of the free 
school system of the city, the initiation of the move- 
ment for the professional training of teachers, and the 
first legislation for the education of women. It was 
through another alumnus, Daniel B. Tompkins, that the 
foundation of the common school system of the State 
was laid. 

Teachers College had its origin in the Industrial Edu- 
cation Association, formed in 1884, to give instruction 
in the elementary home economies and manual arts to 
children who were receiving no such guidance either in 
school or at home. It was soon found that the most ef- 
fective way to accomplish these ends was to provide 
adequately trained teachers. As early as 1881 Barnard, 
it will be remembered, had proposed that " the science 
and art of education " be included in the Columbia cur- 
riculum. These two lines of endeavor coalesced in 1887 
and the New York College for the Training of Teachers 
was incorporated, with Nicholas Murray Butler as its 
president. 

As in the case of Barnard College, the new institution 
was built up at President Barnard's instance outside 
the University, with the definite hope of bringing it later 
into organic relations therewith. Before Professor But- 
ler's retirement as president in 1891, an alliance was 
effected with Columbia, but the distance between the 
two institutions prevented any close co-operation. Dur- 
ing the administration, 1891-97, of his successor, Dr. 
Walter L. Hervey, a charter was obtained and the name 
Teachers College adopted. A closer agreement was also 
made with Columbia, and to the original two years of 
professional training were added first one and then a 
second year of preparatory collegiate work, which were 
maintained until 1906. In 1894 the College moved to its 




Teachers College, from the Green 



I 



TEACHERS COLLEGE 129 

present site. Since 1900, when under tlie agreement 
with the University already referred to the president 
of the University became its president and Professor 
James E. Russell was elected dean, the growth of Teach- 
ers College has been remarkable, both in resources and 
in numbers of students, particularly in students already 
holding a college degree. 

By 1912, the two lines of work fostered from the first 
had become so fully developed, the student body so large, 
and the demands upon the College so diverse that the 
professional and the technical work were divided, and 
two schools — one of education, one of practical arts — 
were established, each under its own faculty. After 
1914 the advanced professional work in education is to be 
upon a graduate basis. 

The School of Practical Arts, to summarize a recent 
report of Dean Russell, offers to both men and women 
a program of study of four years, equivalent in stand- 
ards of admission and graduation to the traditional col- 
lege course. It includes in its program both general 
cultural subjects and a broad and generous technical 
training, based on adequate instruction in science or 
the arts, by which the student may get a high type of 
vocational training in industrial and household arts, 
dietetics, institutional work, public health, fine arts, the 
art industries, music, and physical training. In co- 
operation with the School of Education it prepares stu- 
dents as teachers in these fields. The school enjoys all 
the privileges of University membership, and its gradu- 
ates receive the University degree of Bachelor of Science 
in Practical Arts. 

The significance of this step can hardly be estimated 
at present. It may well be the beginning of a new type 
of collegiate education for women, one wliich sacrifices 



130 EDUCATIONAL ORGANIZATION 

little of the traditional cultural element of the older 
liberal subjects and attaches special importance to those 
practical arts which determine the efficiency of domestic 
and industrial life. 

From the same report of 1912 I take the following 
significant paragraph: 

" During the past fifteen years Teachers College has 
given instruction to some twenty-five thousand students. 
Of this number about thirty-three hundred have been 
graduated. Probably two thousand others will return 
later to finish their work. Such figures tell emphatically 
of the extent of Teachers College influence. Our stu- 
dents are at work in every state of the Union and in 
practically every country on the face of the globe. They 
occupy positions ranging from the kindergarten to the 
university and from assistant in the lowest grade to 
the headship of the educational system of our leading 
state. When one takes into account the youth of the 
institution — in 1898 the graduating class numbered 
twenty-nine and in 1912 it was six hundred — it must be 
clear that the maximum strength of the College will not 
be exerted for several years. Most of our graduates 
are still young; in ten years they will have advanced 
to more commanding positions. By that time we shall 
have ten thousand graduates in the field and probably 
forty thousand others who have had a partial course. 
Then we shall know whether Teachers College training 
is worth what it costs. No other institution has ever 
had such an opportunity. Judgment will be taken on 
the way we use it." 

In 1887, Teachers College started the Horace ]\Iann 
School, with sixty-four pupils, as a school of observa- 
tion and practice. It is still used for observation, but 
it has become also a profitable investment for Teach- 
ers College. Incidentally it is the largest private school 
in the United States and one of the best. Nine-tenths 
of its graduates enter college. The school has outgrown 



TEACHERS COLLEGE 131 

the beautiful building provided for it by Mr. and IVIrs. 
V. Everit Macy, and the high-school work for boys will 
shortly be moved to the property adjoining Van Cort- 
landt Park. 

The Speyer School building, erected ten years ago 
by Mr. and Mrs. James Speyer, serves a double pur- 
pose. It is the school of demonstration and experimen- 
tation for Teachers College, and it is also a center for 
social and neighborhood work among the people of the 
district known as Manhattan ville. 

The relations of Teachers College, the Cinderella of 
the University, as it has been called, with the older 
parts of the University have not always been smooth. 
In no other profession was the necessity of the highest 
training for experts so long unrecognized as in teaching. 
Indeed, the first university chair in education was es- 
tablished hardly more than thirty years ago. When 
Teachers College came into the Columbia fold the word 
pedagogy was anathema to many of the older men, and 
the new school was none too warmly welcomed by them. 
To-day it is fully appreciated as perhaps the most vig- 
orous and progressive part of the entire institution. 
The distinction of its faculty is recognized, as is its 
devotion to the College — in a single year seven of the 
head professors declined more lucrative positions else- 
where. So also is the service of the College in making 
the University known in fields which it would not oth- 
erwise touch. The boot at present is rather upon the 
other foot. Teachers College in the full flush of vigor- 
ous expansion has had, so to speak, no time to collect 
barnacles, and some of its members who have not for- 
gotten the past sins of the University are inclined to 
look down with a condescension sometimes mixed with 
pity upon the older and more conservative faculties. 



132 EDUCATIONAL ORGANIZATION 

This, however, is but a passing phase, like the attitude 
of Canada toward England a decade ago, and the signs 
of its early disappearance are not wanting. 

Although the New York College of Pharmacy is one 
of the youngest professional schools in the University 
system, it is historically next to the oldest. The move- 
ment among pharmacists that resulted in its foundation 
began in 1829, a charter being granted two years later. 
The College was for many years informally allied to 
Columbia through the common service of Professors 
John Torrey and Charles F. Chandler, and in 1904 it 
became part of the University on the same general terms 
of affiliation as Barnard College and Teachers College. 
Since the affiliation its standards for admission and 
graduation have been raised so that they are now the 
highest in the country for this particular profession, and 
its staff of instruction, originally strong, has been fur- 
ther strengthened by assignments from related University 
departments. There are now 441 students, of whom 
sixty-six arc candidates for a University degree. 

The school has been influential in the movement for 
higher professional standards in pharmacy. From its 
very beginning the instruction of undergraduates has 
been recognized as only one of its functions. The asso- 
ciation of those engaged in the practice of pharmacy for 
the promotion of professional interests was provided for 
by its constitution and the first laws for regulating the 
quality of drug importations originated in a resolution 
adopted by this college, which was also largely instru- 
mental in the organization of the American Pharmaceu- 
tical Association. A great element of strength to the 
school is the devoted service rendered to it from the 
first by the pharmacists as a body. 



JOURNALISM 133 

When the School of Political Science was organized 
in 1881, one of its stated purposes was the preparation 
of young men for the duties and responsibilities of pub- 
lic journalism. Only a few students, however, used the 
School for this purpose, and for many years it looked 
as though Columbia's sole relation to this calling was 
as a laboratory to provide subjects for New York's 
sensational journalism at its worst. I remember, for 
example, a lurid story about the University proctors 
spying through the keyholes and transoms of the dor- 
mitories to discover signs of undergraduate disorder. 
The only difficulty with this story was that at Columbia 
there are no proctors, and there are no keyholes and no 
transoms in the dormitory buildings. 

In the year 1903, Mr. Joseph Pulitzer, who had al- 
ready shown his interest in the University by the estab- 
lishment of an important system of scholarships, gave 
the University one million dollars, which after his death 
in October, 1911, became available for the maintenance 
of a School of Journalism. A committee of professors 
shortly afterward reported a plan for the organization 
and conduct of the School, which was approved by an 
advisory board named by Mr. Pulitzer, consisting of a 
group of the most eminent and influential journalists of 
the United States. Dr. Talcott Williams of the Philadel- 
phia Press was appointed Director and Professor J. W. 
Cunliffe of the University of Wisconsin, Associate Di- 
rector. Not waiting for the construction of the building 
for which Mr. Pulitzer's will provided, 76 students pre- 
sented themselves for instruction in September, 1912. 
The present registration is over one hundred. 

Three notable facts as to this school have been pointed 
out. Mr. Pulitzer's gift is the largest sum ever set aside 
by any man for professional training in the calling to 



134 EDUCATIONAL ORGANIZATION 

which he himself belonged. The School is the first to 
use a great city as its laboratories and the first school 
of journalism to be an integral part of a great university 
in a great city. 

A second million is to be given to the University 
when the executors of Mr. Pulitzer's will are satisfied 
that for three years the School has been and then is in 
successful operation; and, after provision is made for 
handsome prizes to be given as a reward for conspicuous 
examples of public service throughout the country in 
journalistic, literary, and artistic endeavor, the remainder 
is to be added to the endowment of the School. 

It is recognized that journalism properly covers the 
whole art of effective presentation in print and it should 
have as prominent a place in the modern curriculum as 
oratory had in the ancient. The sophists and rhetori- 
cians of the day have audiences of millions in the news- 
papers and magazines, and the universities have been 
largely to blame that they lack the responsibility and 
training of an established profession. Columbia real- 
izes, however, and the director has stated, that a school 
of journalism can no more make journalists than a 
law school can make lawyers, or a medical school can 
make physicians. All it can do is to give a man the 
knowledge that is useful to his calling, the training 
necessary to its practice, in such a way as to quicken 
genius and to awake talent. Journalism is an art, the 
art of expressing the progress of society for a day, and 
of uttering the will, the aspirations, the opinions, and 
the commands of the mass. 

The University recognizes it as a grateful task to use 
its best endeavors to carry into fullest execution the 
noble project which Mr. Pulitzer conceived. Too much 
cannot be said in praise of the interest and devotion of 



SUMMER SESSION 135 

the members of the advisory board, without whom this 
important undertaking would lack that helpful guidance 
which only a feeling of professional responsibility and 
a wisdom born of professional experience can give. 

It was Mr. Pulitzer's desire that the privileges of the 
School be open to every student of marked ability who 
had had a high-school education, and for that reason the 
customary two yeai^ of preparatory collegiate study is 
not insisted upon. This is strongly urged, however, and 
a gratifying number of the students either have had col- 
lege training elsewhere or are taking a combined college 
and professional course. The School is to-day the lusti- 
est year-old academic infant in America. The students 
have taken up their work with enthusiasm and have 
added a valuable and picturesque element to the Uni- 
versity life. The director and his staff have thrown 
themselves heart and soul into the new project and have 
already inaugurated valuable educational experiments, 
particularly in the closer correlation, or interlocking as 
they call it, of the different academic subjects of study. 

When summer courses were inaugurated at Columbia 
in 1900, the work was regarded by our academic com- 
munity at large as something outside of the real field 
of university operations, in no sense a vital part of 
the activity of the institution. It was supposed to be 
chiefly useful as an opportunity for ambitious teachers 
who had no chance of real university training to get a 
tolerable imitation of it for a few weeks in the year, 
and, on the other hand, as a means whereby impecunious 
junior officers of the University could make both ends 
meet. In a few years the status of summer work, from 
an experiment of doubtful intellectual and academic 
propriety, given reluctant house-room, changed to its 



136 EDUCATIONAL ORGANIZATION 

present universally accepted position as one of the most 
thoroughly useful, creditable, and characteristic parts 
of the life of the University. Not only is the change 
amusing to those who believed in the Summer Session 
from the first, but it represents a very important fact 
in the history of the University. 

Year by year the academic quality of the students has 
steadily improved, until at present practically half are 
qualified to become candidates for some University de- 
gree. Taking the figures of 1913, sixty-two per cent, of 
the total registration of 4,539 were teachers. The pro- 
portion of men to women was a little higher than two to 
three. The fact that nearly half the students have been 
members of some previous session, and many hundreds 
are also in residence during the winter, tends to bind the 
student body together from the opening. In general Sum- 
mer Session students know what they w-ant to do and how 
they want to do it, so that little time is lost in getting 
under way. Some details as to their incidental activities 
are given in a later chapter. The dominant note, how- 
ever, is one of hard intellectual work. 

The Summer Session is worth while for its own sake, 
and it is also worth while as a sort of fifth wheel for 
the w^hole complex academic vehicle. Educational slack 
of all kinds can be taken up in it without disturbing 
the winter programs. Students transferring from 
other institutions, for example, can clear up prerequisite 
subjects that would otherwise prove most troublesome. 
The havoc wrought by illness or too great devotion to 
extra-curricular matters can be repaired. From the 
faculty point of view, important educational experiments 
may be tried or new teachers given a chance to show 
what they can do. The future historian of Columbia 
will have many reasons for giving an important place to 



EXTENSION TEACHING 137 

the first decade of the twentieth century, and not the 
least of these will be the development of the summer 
life, with its pieturesqueness, its wide field of usefulness, 
and its solid foundation of scholarship. 

As early as 1830, Columbia endeavored to extend her 
influence to those outside the academic walls. In 1885 
the project was again taken up, and Saturday morning 
lectures were voluntarily given by members of the fac- 
ulty. Mr. Low greatly extended the system of public 
lectures, making arrangements for them at Cooper Union 
and the museums, as well as at the University. From 
the beginnings of the Teachers College movement, also, 
an increasing amount of co-ordinated lecture work had 
been carried on outside the regular curriculum. The de- 
mands for increased academic training made by the City 
Board of Education in 1898 furnished a strong stimulus 
to these courses. 

In 1904 this work in Extension Teaching was formally 
made part of the offering of the University, and in 1910 
it was placed under the direction of Professor J. C. 
Egbert, to be administered in close co-ordination with 
the work of the Summer Session, of which he is also 
director. Three years later the two parts of the work 
were divided. Extension Teaching continuing to make 
provision for regular courses of standard duration and 
requirements, for which academic credit has been given 
since 1904, and an Institute of Arts and Sciences being 
founded to take charge of the briefer courses for which 
no formal credit could be granted, and to co-ordinate 
the system of lectures and recitals given throughout the 
University. 

I\Iost of the regular courses in Extension Teaching are 
now given at the University, subject to exactly the same 



138 EDUCATIONAL ORGANIZATION 

standards which are required for the regular pro- 
gramme, the courses, however, being offered at hours 
convenient to those who cannot enjoy regular University 
residence. One-fifth of the extension students have 
satisfied the requirements for matriculation under some 
faculty and each year many transfer to regular mem- 
bership in the University. The work has also been car- 
ried, with as yet no striking success, into Brooklyn, 
Newark, and other nearby centers, and even as far 
afield as Buffalo. The present registration is 2,754, to 
which should be added 1,152 students who are tech- 
nically registered as members of special classes in Teach- 
ers College. Neither group is included in the totals of 
regular university registration. The teaching staff num- 
bers more than one hundred and fifty instructors, in- 
cluding some of the most distinguished professors of the 
University. 

Like the Summer Session, this work has an important 
function in maintaining the characteristic elasticity of 
the Columbia organization. It has practically removed 
from the undergraduate colleges the old bugbear of the 
special student, since all applicants of doubtful aca- 
demic preparation are referred to the extension classes, 
from which they may be transferred after thej'- have 
shown their proficiency. Many of the regular students 
pursue extension courses either in order to avoid con- 
flicts in the regular program or to take up some spe- 
cial subject for which no provision is made there. For 
ten years the University maintained a special class of 
irregular and usually unsatisfactory students kno'W'n as 
auditors. This class also has disappeared. The exten- 
sion courses are more generous in their welcome of new 
subjects than the older departments and the program 
includes work in playwriting, in the psychology of ad- 



EXTENSION TEACHING 139 

vertising, and in optometry, as well as in frankly non- 
academic subjects, such as typewriting and stenography. 
The only dangers in the rapid development of Exten- 
sion Teaching to which the University seems ex- 
posed are first that of adulterating the student body 
with irregulars of a lower preparation, and secondly that 
of giving an opportunity to ambitious junior professors 
to carry an unduly heavy load at the expense not only of 
their health, but of their responsibilities to the regular 
faculties. These difficulties, however, can be overcome 
by careful administration, and the public service of the 
work to that large part of the community which cannot 
enjoy regular university training is hard to overestimate. 

The Institute of Arts and Sciences has only just been 
opened, but it has the great advantage of having an 
excellent basis upon which to build in the hundreds of 
public lectures heretofore delivered each year at the 
University. Three hundred lectures and other forms 
of entertainment are to be offered during each season 
under the auspices of the Institute. Many of the best 
known profesvsors have agreed to deliver courses of six 
or more lectures of the English University Extension 
type, and for musical productions the co-operation of 
the Philharmonic Orchestra, the Kneisel Quartet, and 
other organizations has been assured. An important 
feature of its activities, already well developed, is in 
choral singing, for which New York offers at present 
fewer opportunities than do many smaller cities. The 
plan is financed by an annual fee of ten dollars, 
which will admit the member free to lectures and the like, 
and at a reduced rate to professional performances. Al- 
ready more than one thousand men and women have 
joined the Institute. 



140 EDUCATIONAL ORGANIZATION 

The teaching staff of the University for 1913-14 num- 
bers 740, exclusive of clinical assistants and of those 
teaching only in the Summer Session or Extension 
classes. In the relations of these men and women to one 
another, there is a double pattern of organization. There 
is that of the faculties and boards, grouped around the 
University Council, which is representative of all facul- 
ties and " treaty powers," Particularly among the 
newer activities, small administrative boards have taken 
the place of faculties, partly because the council de- 
sires to retain a closer hold and partly lest in the multi- 
plication of technical faculties the institution should 
become a polytechnicum, with the center of academic 
gravity no longer in the realm of advanced scholarship. 
On the other hand, there are the departments, a dis- 
tinctly modern product — at Columbia they hardly ex- 
isted before Mr. Low's time — which cut sharply across 
the faculty and corporate lines. While rather illogically 
they bear no organic relation to the council, they have 
nevertheless a powerful hold upon the institution 
through their important share in the preparation of the 
budget. 

Dean Russell has pointed out the underlying interest 
of each unit of organization, that of the faculty in the 
student and his needs, that of the department in the 
development and rounding out of each subject of study 
itself. It is the frequent conflict of these interests which, 
for the present at any rate, make the double weave both 
vexatious and necessary. 

There are two general schools of thought as to uni- 
versity organization at Columbia ; one, of which Professor 
Burgess has long been the leader, lays emphasis on the 
individual professor and the faculty, while the other, 
until very recently the more generally followed, em- 



FACULTIES AND DEPARTMENTS 141 

phasizes the department as the dominating unit. On this 
point President Butler has said : 

" When the University was in the state of reorgani- 
zation and reconstruction, the faculties, as such, had 
a good deal of business at every session. They were 
framing new conceptions of their work, new regulations 
for guidance, new conceptions of their inter-dependency 
with other parts of the institution, and the meetings were 
long and animated and interesting. After the frame- 
work was made and operated successfully for a period 
of years, and had been amended as need arose, then 
the faculties, as such, found themselves left with only 
more or less routine work to do, passing on sometimes 
very formally and in a routine way the recommenda- 
tions of the departments. Much of this routine is now 
in the hands of committees. 

* ' What appears to me to be going on with us, although 
others might not agree with this diagnosis, is the attri- 
tion of the faculties between the council above and the 
departments below, and I should not be at all surprised 
if twenty years from now, or probably in less time, the 
faculties, which are really a survival from the middle 
ages, should practically disappear. This is not because 
anybody desires it to be so, not because it is the policy 
of any official or board, but because it is the law of aca- 
demic gravitation. ' ' 

The fulfillment of this prophecy seems likely to be 
postponed at any rate, by a recent vote of the University 
Council, which looks toward formal recommendations 
by the faculties as such with regard to the budget. 
These are not to supplant the departmental recommen- 
dations, but to supplement them. Any control over the 
purse strings, however, even indirect control, is certain 
to enhance the power of the faculties. 

In all the professional schools, moreover, one funda- 
mental faculty service still remains to be completed, 



142 EDUCATIONAL ORGANIZATION 

and that is a careful simplification of the courses lead- 
ing to the professional degrees. These courses in Amer- 
ica, it must be remembered, developed from the appren- 
ticeship system, and for this reason and from de- 
partmental enthusiasms they have in the course of time 
become overloaded with minute and non-essential de- 
tails, from which they are only just beginning to be 
freed. 

In addition to the original faculty of the College, 
the faculties and boards in the order of their estab- 
lishment are as follows : Law, Medicine, Applied Science, 
Political Science, Philosophy, Pure Science; Barnard 
College, Teachers College (divided in 1912 into Edu- 
cation and Practical Arts), Pharmacy, Fine Arts. 
The last named is about to be discontinued for the pres- 
ent. There are Administrative Boards for the Summer 
Session, Extension Teaching, Agriculture, Journalism, 
and Architecture. 

Many professors sit in more than one faculty, some 
in as many as four. In some cases the faculty has 
grown very unwieldy, containing more than fifty men. 
The strength and usefulness of any faculty depends 
upon a comparatively restricted field and a community 
of intellectual interest. Where these are lacking, little 
can be accomplished. It is for this reason that Teachers 
College has recently budded off a Faculty of Practical 
Arts from its original Faculty of Education. 

The statutes recognize fifty-four departments of in- 
struction. For certain administrative purposes these 
are grouped into sixteen divisions. While in some cases 
the divisional organization is a real and useful one, in 
general the division at Columbia has never taken the 
important place in the scheme of things that it has. 



DEPARTMENTS AND DIVISIONS 143 

for example, at Harvard. Excepting education, which 
may be regarded as a school, a faculty, a division, or a 
department, according to the point of view of the ob- 
server, the largest departments, as judged by student 
registration, are English, physical education, chemistry, 
physics, and history, each of which registers annually 
more than six hundred students. Six other departments 
have each more than four hundred students. No fewer 
than thirty of the departments have an annual appropria- 
tion for maintenance greater than was the entire income 
of the institution as late as 1823. The larger depart- 
ments have more members than the entire faculty of 
many a good small college. 

In general, each department has descended from some 
professorial " chair." The strong professors grouped 
their disciples about them as assistants, and for this 
reason the original form of organization was a military 
one, with the senior professor in supreme command. 
Little by little, with the calling of men of maturity 
and distinction in different fields to the University, this 
has broken down and the best departments are usually 
upon a democratic basis, the details of administration 
being often carried on by one of the younger professors. 
Where the department is still upon the military basis, 
the professors and instructors of Teachers College and 
the other treaty powers are likely to maintain only a 
nominal relationship with their colleagues. Where it 
is democratic, the corporate lines are drawn far less 
tightly. There is a tendency at present toward a merg- 
ing of the smaller departments which, usually for acci- 
dental reasons, have grown up independently into larger 
and stronger units. 

With all of its evident elements of strength, the de- 
partmental system has one definite weakness, and that 



144 



EDUCATIONAL ORGANIZATION 



for a very human reason. Professors are likely to be- 
lieve firmly that their subjects or their departments are of 
greater relative importance than is really the case, other- 
wise they might well have chosen some other field for 
their life work. Now beyond a certain point the develop- 
ment of any field is at the expense of the institution as 
a whole, and the over-developments that have come about 
primarily from human rivalry between departments con- 
stitute not the least important reason for the low level 
of academic salaries here and elsewhere to-day. The new 
plan of faculty budgets has been devised primarily with 
a view to checking such over-developments for the future. 



TEACHERS AND EXECUTIVES 

The Personal Equation. Complexity and Diversity. Social 
Relations. Economic Factors. A Working Community. Pro- 
fessors and Students. Publication. Teaching. In Memoriam. 
Earlier Men. Anthon, Drisler, Van Amringe. The Presidents. 

A UNIVERSITY is made not by situation, by money, or 
by machinery, but by men. " The greatness of a uni- 
versity," — I am quoting from an address by Professor 
H. T. Peck, — " however stimulated and inspired, does 
not depend first of all on bricks and mortar, upon well- 
ordered curriculum, and upon the material equipment, 
books, the apparatus, and the smoothness of the admin- 
istrative machinery. It depends in its last analysis on 
the men who do the work, who guide and excite and stir 
the minds of those who carry away, in the end, a far 
less vivid impression of their studies than of the per- 
sonal influence of their instructors. ' ' 

And it is worth while for those outside of academic 
life to know something of such men, for, as President 
Butler not long ago said: '* It is the dreamer of dreams, 
the poet, the prophet, the man of letters, the man of 
science, who has the world in his hands to-day and has 
always had it. He is the man who sets free the forces, 
who sets in motion the tendencies, who gives expression 
to the ideas, which seize hold of and mold the people. ' ' 

It is not easy to picture adequately the dead or the 
living, the present or the absent. Our academic body 
was indeed reminded at a recent " family dinner " that 
the established convention, that nothing but good shall 

145 



146 TEACHERS AND EXECUTIVES 

be spoken of the dead, finds its complement in that other 
convention upon which we are more accustomed to act, 
that nothing good shall be spoken of the living. It is 
not even easy to classify our human material, for the 
same man, it often happens, is worthy of note as under- 
graduate, alumnus, teacher, administrator, and trustee. 

The ramification of the modem faculties and depart- 
ments from the original " chairs " forms an interest- 
ing subject of investigation. Less than fifty j'-ears ago, 
the erudite Scotchman, Nairne, was supposed to cover 
a field which is now occupied by more tlian forty pro- 
fessorships. There is, however, nothing in this ramifica- 
tion that is peculiarly typical of Columbia. Our aca- 
demic titles, as a final difficulty, lack the piquancy of 
the British nomenclature. I can give, for instance, noth- 
ing to correspond with the recent official announcement 
from Oxford that Mr. So-and-so, Wilde Reader in 
Mental Philosophy, has become an Extraordinary Fel- 
low of Corpus. 

Of the men and women who are assistant, associate, 
and full professors, the average age is forty-six 
years. They have held professorial rank at Colum- 
bia for an average of seven years. Seventy have earned 
the Ph.D. degree in course. Two hundred and thirty- 
four give presumably their whole time to the University ; 
at any rate, their service elsewhere is incidental. Forty- 
eight professors, thirty-two of these phj^sicians, frankly 
divide their time between university and other inter- 
ests. 

The aggregate number of changes (appointments, pro- 
motions, and the like) of 1912-13 in the teaching and 
administrative staff was 136. The changes since Mr. 
Low 's inauguration in 1890 make a total of 2,460. 

From the very first a notable characteristic of the 



COMPLEXITY AND DIVERSITY 147 

Columbia staff has been the wide diversity of academic 
provenance. In King's College, Johnson was from Yale, 
Cutting from Eton and Cambridge, Treadwell from 
Harvard, Harper from Glasgow, Cooper from Oxford. 
The original medical school was mainly under Edin- 
burgh influence, but Leyden and London and Paris had 
their share. Of our own alumni, the first to receive a 
professorial appointment was Vardill, in 1773. Early 
in the nineteenth century there was a period of inbreed- 
ing, and for some years Columbia College was in charge 
of a faculty composed wholly of its own alumni. Later 
came a notable group of West Point men : Davies, Hack- 
ley, Vinton, Peck, Trowbridge. After 1857, Nairne rep- 
resented Scotch scholarship; Lieber, and later Chand- 
ler and Burgess, the German ideals of education ; Egle- 
ston the brilliant qualities of French scientific training. 
Burgess was the first of a distinguished and strikingly 
large group of Amherst men, most of them disciples 
in his own field of political science. 

Due, I think, to Barnard's stimulating influence and 
to his establishment of alumni fellowships, a striking 
proportion of the men who graduated from Columbia 
during his administration entered academic life. A few 
went elsewhere, notably Ashmore to Union, Hopkins to 
Yale, and Ely to Wisconsin, but the majority remained 
at Columbia. Of these there are now in service as full 
professors, twenty-six men. 

Under Mr. Low not only did men like Brander Mat- 
thews, Crocker, and MacDowell come into academic life, 
but Columbia robbed her sisters elsewhere right and left. 
Osborn and Sloane were called from Princeton ; Keener, 
Cohn, and Burr from Harvard; Robinson and Cattell 
from Pennsylvania, to be followed in the next admin- 
istration by Seager and Devine, and Lindsay. Our worst 



148 TEACHERS AND EXECUTIVES 

robberies, however, have been due to the well-deserved 
reputation acquired by ]\Iiss Thomas for her skill 
in picking promising academic material — Wilson, Gid- 
dings, Lee, Earle, Lodge, and Morgan were all called 
from Bryn Mawr. The newer institutions west of the 
Alleghanies are to-day promising fields for plunder. 
John Dewey, and later Alexander Smith, came from 
Chicago ; Abbott and Suzzallo from Loland Stanford ; 
Harper and Cunliffe from Wisconsin. Some of our own 
alumni have recently returned either from professional 
life, like Walker and Slichter to the Engineering School 
and Stone to the Law School ; or like Baldwin, Burnside, 
and Zinsser from professorships elsewhere. With the 
new spirit in the Medical School, the old policy of tak- 
ing none but its own graduates into service has passed, 
and men have recently been called from Johns Hop- 
kins, Cornell, Pennsylvania, and Chicago. 

To return to the question of degrees, an analysis made 
a year or so ago showed that more than two-thirds of 
the professors received the first degree from some other 
institution. Among 267 professors, 78 institutions were 
represented by one or more graduates. Seventy-five first 
degrees were from Columbia, 25 from Harvard, 19 from 
Yale, 13 from Amherst, 10 from Princeton, 9 from the 
College of the City of New York, 5 each from Williams 
and Toronto, and 4 from Johns Hopkins. The faculties 
include 13 who hold the degree of doctor of philosophy 
from Johns Hopkins, 9 from Harvard, 24 from other 
American universities, and 22 from foreign institutions. 

A community so large is necessarily composed of all 
sorts and conditions. Our collection includes every 
known type of professor. We have the faithful stay-at- 
home, who boasted that he had never missed an academic 
exercise in eighteen years (** What a barren existence! " 



COMPLEXITY AND DIVERSITY 149 

was the president's comment), and we have the men 
who are always going away to the ends of the earth — 
Jackson to Persia and India, Shepherd to South America, 
Crampton to Polynesia. All onr anthropologists have 
been initiated into remote Indian tribes. 

We have men of simplicity and modesty, and these 
include our most distinguished ; and we have a few suf- 
ferers from la folie des grandeurs. There are those who 
try to do everything, even the minutest details, them- 
selves and those who turn over everything, even matters 
of constructive policy, to the first-comer. The man who 
is insolvent at the end of the month works cheek by 
jowl with the man of wealth. An engineering expert 
once complained to me that to be a professor was a lux- 
ury which cost him some fifty dollars a day. 

Our men are shortsighted and far-seeing, legal-minded 
and anarchistic. We have men of startling views on 
all subjects. Some proclaim them from the house-tops; 
others, equally courageous, do not. An excellent com- 
ment on this particular aspect of academic freedom was 
not long ago printed in the Quarterly: '* A professor 
will not always wish to teach everything that he pri- 
vately believes to be true — not because he is afraid, but 
because he is modest. There is such a thing as an intel- 
lectual discretion which has nothing to do with theory. 
Just in proportion as he is permeated Avith the scientific 
spirit, he will know that human institutions do not fol- 
low a law of logic ; that opinions are in constant flux, 
and that all social opinions have their historical justifi- 
cation. ... He will even count on the possibility of 
himself changing his mind." 

Every academic community, including our own, has 
its share of men who through age or illness, often 
through overwork, have lost their grip, whose flames have 



150 TEACHERS AND EXECUTIVES 

burned out. Sometimes, indeed, the flame was never 
more than an ignis fatuiis. It is, however, less true to- 
day than when it was written, that there is no profession 
where failure to pull one's own weight can go so long 
undiscovered as in teaching. Even in these days of Car- 
negie pensions, permanence of tenure, that fundamental 
asset of the teacher's career, involves necessarily the 
presence of dead wood; and our trustees have learned, 
after some costly and painful experiments, that it is bet- 
ter in many cases to pay an additional salary and work 
around an academic obstruction than forcibly to re- 
move it. 

It was not until Mr. Low's time that the faculty as 
a social unit came into being. In the early days the 
trustees were solicitous as to the souls of the professors ; 
at any rate, the president was instructed in 1846 to 
report their attendance on daily prayers; and as late 
as 1877 their duties as teachers were specified in the mi- 
nutest detail. Otherwise the records show nothing re- 
garding the professors as a group, although as indi- 
viduals they received appropriate consideration. The 
first informal gathering of the professors as a body was 
in Mr. Low's house in March, 1890, to discuss general 
problems of organization. Of the thirty-four men then 
gathered together but three are now in teaching service. 
The new spirit promptly made itself felt through the 
establishment of retiring allowances and arrangements 
for sabbatical leave of absence. 

University teas and faculty receptions were later es- 
tablished and the President's House, recently finished, 
is designed primarily as a social center for the university 
community. In 1906 one of the older buildings at I\Iorn- 
ingside, with no little charm of a mid- Victorian kind, 



SOCIAL RELATIONS 151 

was made into a Faculty Club. This has to-day become 
one of the most vital forces in the institution. It has 
been possible to keep the scale of things much simpler 
than in similar clubs elsewhere, with the result that the 
membership includes practically all the University men, 
including those in the lowest ranks. Our neighbors from 
the Seminary, the Hospital, and the Cathedral are also 
welcome. The fact that one hundred and fifty men take 
luncheon together every day makes the club a potent 
influence against intellectual isolation and departmental 
provincialism. It is a great place for the crossing of 
intellectual wires and, thanks to its existence, ideas are 
no longer carried from classroom to classroom, * ' if at all, 
subterraneously by students, as the plague is carried 
from house to house by rats," The mathematicians and 
philosophers, for example, have been conducting here an 
intellectual flirtation of several years' duration. There 
is also a club within the club — the Every Other Saturday 
(which meets on alternate "Wednesdays). 

It is an eminently free-speaking community. If, as 
Professor Keyser has pointed out, your man of letters 
or student of linguistics describes his colleague of the 
laboratory as a sublimated tinker, the latter may with 
equal amiability respond by a reference to a philological 
rodent who spends his days gnawing at the root of a 
verb. After luncheon every day there are a number of 
games of chess, for chess, followed by tennis and hand- 
ball, is the leading faculty sport. In the evenings are 
held the informal faculty dinners, which are proving a 
much more effective means of getting things done wisely 
than the formal meetings with gavel and ballot box in 
the Trustees' Room. So also are the meetings of the de- 
partmental clubs. 

The women of the University have recently organized 



152 TEACHERS AND EXECUTIVES 

their own Faculty Club, which has its own headquarters 
and is growing rapidly. 

The University Quarterly deserves mention as a fac- 
ulty organ, for perhaps its chief service is as an inter- 
preter of the members of the staff to one another. Any- 
thing that a professor may write in its pages is carefully 
read by hundreds of his colleagues, and the policy of 
devoting a special issue to the w'ork of some particular 
branch of the institution enables the men in other parts 
to practice at home the art of being well informed. 

The economic problems of the professor are acute, here 
as elsewhere. Professor Clark has pointed out that teach- 
ers are hired in order that their services may be largely 
given away. They bring a great deal of wealth into 
existence, but not in a way that enables them to get much 
of it under their control and collect the pay for it. The 
teacher's only economic hold is that he must be lured 
into teaching from some other possible occupation. As 
indeed Professor J. J. Thompson once told us at Com- 
mencement, it is not possible for even the purest scien- 
tist to live on nothing. The Columbia professors proba- 
bly regard their poverty as more grinding than that of 
their contemporaries in smaller centers, on account of 
the higher cost of living in the city, plus, if they be hon- 
est, the greater opportunities for the pleasant expendi- 
ture of money in the fields that lie between necessity and 
luxury. On the other hand, they have, to say nothing 
of the opportunities for earning money, one great asset. 
In a great city there are quite as many different stand- 
ards of living as there are professorships, and there is no 
inconvenient norm to which all must conform. If a man 
wishes to live his home life without reference to that of 
his colleagues, he can be swallowed up by the city as 
effectually as by a quicksand. Indeed, it is one charm 



A WORKING COMMUNITY 153 

of our social relations with one another that, unlike that 
of the army post or the small college town, they are not 
inevitable but voluntary. 

It may be of some comfort to the Columbia teacher 
to know that, of the twenty-one other institutions in the 
Association of American Universities, none expends 
within $300,000 as much as does Columbia for teachers' 
salaries annually, and in only two cases is a larger pro- 
portion of the total expense of the university devoted to 
this purpose. 

A faculty apartment house is greatly needed, for 
by the irony of fate the very work that the professors 
of Columbia have done to increase the prestige of the 
University is compelling them to move farther and 
farther from her doors. The charms of living in the 
university environment are attracting numbers of per- 
sons in comfortable circumstances to its vicinity, thereby 
raising the rents of nearby apartment houses to a figure 
that is prohibitive to all but the most favored of the 
University officers. 

The faculty as a whole are rather notably a hard- 
working lot, both because they have to and because they 
like it. The general administration does its best to 
lighten routine chores. The trustees realize that the 
professor is the goose that lays the golden egg (we have 
to thank the New York Evening Post for the metaphor), 
and that there is no better way to kill the animal intel- 
lectually than by overfeeding with trivial tasks. Prac- 
tically every married man, without private means, has 
however to add to his income by outside work, and very 
few are willing to rest on their laurels as to scholarship 
and production. Columbia is probably no better and no 
worse than other American universities in the matter 



154 TEACHERS AND EXECUTIVES 

of overloading her men. As to whether this overloading 
is a serious menace one can get an authoritative opinion 
on either side. One of our optimistic professors saj's 
that the fortunate combination of teaching and research, 
so peculiarly American, makes the life of the university- 
instructor a happy one, and it will in time have a w^hole- 
some effect upon our learning. On the other hand, a dis- 
tinguished visitor, Professor Bjerknes, recently assured 
us that, if he had been required to do as much teach- 
ing and administrative work as we do, he would never 
have been invited to lecture here in a difficult branch 
of science. At any rate, the atmosphere of hard work 
and the broader interests of the large city free our men 
from petty jealousies and controversies. To quote Dr. 
Slosson once more: " The Columbia professors do not 
worry themselves or worry each other as they are apt to 
do in smaller faculty communities. . , . Conservative 
and radical, orthodox and heterodox, commingle without 
self-consciousness, and each man views the eccentricity 
of his colleague with a colorless or indifferent eye. In 
criticising the ideals or the actions of another he does 
not resort to a whisper or a roar, but uses the same tone 
of voice as though he were expressing an unfavorable 
opinion of the weather." 

On the other hand, our men are not too busy to ar- 
range dinners or prepare Festschriften in honor of col- 
leagues who have passed some milestone of academic 
service. Not a year passes without one or more such 
tributes. Perhaps the most interesting was the publica- 
tion in 1908 of a volume of essays by Columbia men in 
honor of a Harvard professor, "William James. Of the 
nineteen essays, eight were by former pupils of James 
now in tlie Columbia faculties. Last year we all gath- 
ered in the Faculty Club to bid Professor Goodnow 



PROFESSORS AND STUDENTS 155 

Godspeed before he left for Pekin to take up the duties 
of Constitutional Adviser to the Chinese Republic. 

We are not, alas, without our academic intolerances 
and we have suffered from them. Teachers College, now 
that she is powerful and prosperous, would be easier to 
get along with if, when she entered the University a 
dozen years ago, some of the members of the older fac- 
ulties had been more willing to regard pedagogy as a 
socially respectable calling. Speaking broadly, the men 
in the natural sciences and their applications are now 
in the saddle and are rather prone to look down upon 
their less fortunate colleagues, just as the classicists did 
not so long ago, and as, unless signs fail, the men in the 
social, or as Professor Cattell calls them the ' * unnatural 
sciences " will be doing before many years. 

In no respect has there been a greater change between 
the old and the new Columbia than in the relations be- 
tween faculty and students. In the old days a great 
gulf was fixed ; to-day there is practically no line drawn 
between the two. Even in the late seventies the student 
editorials laid all undergraduate troubles at the door 
of faculty exclusiveness and aloofness, and, when Pro- 
fessor Merriam established an informal volunteer class 
in Greek, the event was striking enough to be signalized 
by a resolution of appreciation from the trustees. The 
individual professors who were willing to descend from 
Olympus stood out sharply. The extraordinary popu- 
larity among the alumni of Van Amringe and Chandler 
was due primarily to their endeavor to understand the 
point of view of these same men when they were stu- 
dents. By trying to look at things through the student 's 
eyes they saw his difficulties and were better able to help 
him in their solution. Professor " Billy " Peck was 



156 TEACHERS AND EXECUTIVES 

humanly interested in his students. So also were Ware, 
Boyesen, and Sprague Smith, So doubtless were others, 
but it was not until the coming of the men whom Presi- 
dent Low gathered about him that this became the rule 
rather than the exception, and Columbia grew to be, in 
Newman's phrase, a real Alma Plater, knowing her chil- 
dren one by one, not a foundry or a mint or a tread- 
mill. 

One very important feature in the relations between 
officers and students is brought about by the high rentals 
in New York City. Because of these, practically none 
of the professors can afford to have studies at home, and 
they spend nearly all of their working hours at the Uni- 
versity. It has since Barnard's time been the policy 
of the trustees to make provision for the independent 
work of its officers on the grounds, and every professor 
has his own office. As a result the student can almost al- 
ways find the professor when he wants him. This may and 
does involve considerable interruption to the professor, 
hardly more perhaps than he would have in his own 
home, but it means on the other hand a very great privi- 
lege to the students who are interested in their work. 

In its different parts there are many things at the 
University to bring offieere and students naturally to- 
gether: the honors work in the College, the preparation 
of dissertations and seminar papers for graduate stu- 
dents, the architectural ateliers, the geological and en- 
gineering trips, the various aspects of social and reli- 
gious work. And this does not benefit the student 
alone. The chance to multiply one's efficiency by the 
aid of a devoted band of able young disciples is no 
doubt part of the drawing power of the great universi- 
ties. Dr. Keen calls students the best whips and spurs 
that he knows, and one of our younger men has pointed 



PROFESSORS AND STUDENTS 157 

out that the undergraduate, intensely interested as he 
is in everything about him, knows life crudely perhaps, 
but clearly. He has curiosity in a high degree. He is 
worldly wise. He has something to give the instructor 
as well as to receive. Another says that both students 
and teachers of Columbia care most for the scholarship 
that is productive, and their relation is probably to a 
higher degree that of collaboration than at any other 
institution in the United States. 

"Without losing in dignity, the professors take care 
that they do not grow away from the students. One 
professor whose college diploma was signed more than 
twenty years ago can and does beat the best of the 
undergraduates at tennis, another in fencing. For more 
than a decade there has been a faculty-senior baseball 
game at Commencement, and the faculty has usually 
won. There are also matches in golf and chess. One 
professor from the goodness of his heart coaches the de- 
bating team, another the Elizabethan plays. Following 
the example set by Professor Woodberry in King's 
Crown and Professor Pellew in the Chemical Society, 
many men give much of their time to the work of dif- 
ferent departmental societies. 

The need of these personal relations is officially recog- 
nized in a system of faculty advisers in the under- 
graduate schools. To speak frankly, these formal 
schemes, though they have their place as a sort of offi- 
cial insurance that no student will be overlooked, are 
less successful than are the more informal relations. 
One adviser recently confessed that, while the students 
show their delightful tolerance for all the mysterious — 
and to them often whimsical — projects of their elders, 
the only advice they want or are willing to take is semi- 
legal advice in the technical method of getting around 



158 TEACHERS AND EXECUTIVES 

some inconvenient University regulation. This, how- 
ever, is perhaps as it should be. 

The Columbia faculty is a producing community and 
it is less affected than is commonly the case by the 
current claptrap as to the capricious sanctity of re- 
search. By this I do not mean that the importance of 
the discovery of new truth and the responsibility of the 
universities to the world for such discoveries are not 
appreciated by our professors. They realize, however, 
that, barring exceptions at the extremes, the distinction 
between research and so-called hack or commercial work 
is mainly one of attitude. In the words of one of the 
world's most distinguished contributors to pure science, 
Professor E. B. Wilson, the aim of a Lister or a Pasteur 
is not less lofty than that of a Darwin or a Eyell ; what 
counts is the spirit in which the work is done. The men 
do what their hands find to do, and do it with their 
might. The fact that Pupin's researches upon the con- 
servation of electric current made him a wealthy man 
does not detract from their scientific value, nor should 
we think the less of the assistant in our botanical labo- 
ratory because he stumbled, while testing grain seeds, 
upon a new and profitable breakfast food. At the 
Medical School the work of our clinicians is no less schol- 
arly because it will save many human lives, and is no 
more and no less appreciated as science than are the 
researches in the less practical field of comparative 
anatomy. The men in Teachers College are particularly 
fortunate in combining sound scholarship and imme- 
diate usefulness. The lessons of our children will 
be freed from much unnecessary drudgery through 
Lodge's vocabulary of all the Latin words that one will 
ever have need to look up, and Smith's sensible mathe- 



PUBLICATION 159 

matical tests. Monroe's Cyclopedia of Education and 
the collections of original documents being made by 
Giddings and Shotwell may be called hack work, if 
you like, but it does not lessen their value. In the vig- 
orous and, to us, rather un-British advertising of the new 
Encyclopedia Britannica we are by no means humili- 
ated in finding the names and counterfeit presentments 
of so many of our colleagues. 

Not the least useful part of our recent production 
has been in family lectures, where the men in different 
fields of science and letters get up and describe to their 
colleagues, in terms as simple as possible, the work to 
which they are devoting their lives, and explain why 
it is worth while. Three volumes of these lectures have 
recently been published by the University Press. 

The common or garden text-book is judged upon its 
real merits by the writer's colleagues, and not only 
financial return but academic honor came in the past 
from Anthon's editions and Davies' Legendre. These 
books, we are proud to remember, first introduced into 
the United States the fruits of German classical and 
archaeological scholarship and the then new French 
mathematics. It comes to-day, to name only a few among 
many, from the collections of cases made by Keener and 
Burdick, from the engineering text-books of Burr and 
Crocker, from Robinson and Beard's histories, and 
McMurry's or Dodge's geographies. 

Nor is the editor without honor in his own country. 
How President Butler finds time with his countless 
other duties to conduct the Educational Review no one 
knows, but the fact that he does is appreciated, as is 
Munroe Smith's work for the Political Science Quar- 
terly, Todd's for the Romanic Review, and Tombo's for 
the University Quarterly. Cattell's brilliant editorship 



IGO TEACHERS AND EXECUTIVES 

of Science and the Pojndar Science Monthly, even when 
he uses them to tell us our sins of omission and commis- 
sion as a university, and possibly because of this use, 
endears him to us all. He himself is a living proof that 
we have so7nc academic freedom, at any rate. 

The University Bibliography is printed each year and 
gives thirty or more closely printed pages to the indi- 
vidual contributions of officers. Of course some of these 
records are padded — there is one case of a man whose 
mere list of titles for a single year covered nearly four 
pages — but the record as a whole is one of which the 
University may well be proud. The fact that each year 
several publications by our colleagues are translated into 
foreign languages, Oriental as well as European, is par- 
ticularly pleasant. It is refreshing to see how reluctant 
our academic cobblers are to stick to their lasts. 
"We find engineers, architects, and psychiatrists writing 
poetry, a zoologist who writes authoritatively on me- 
dieval armor, a classicist on current American politics, 
an experimental psychologist on radical democracy, a 
mathematician discussing Swedenborg. 

A man need not find his way into print to be appre- 
ciated by his colleagues. It is recognized that the prod- 
uct of the deep scholarship of some men, like the late 
Professor Price, is to be found in the scholarship of 
younger men who sat at their feet rather than in books. 
Others give their energies largely to the upbuilding of 
departmental equipment. The really excellent labora- 
tory equipment in mining is mainly home-made, and 
this, by the way, is true to the traditions of our School 
of Mines, for in its early struggles the professors drew 
the plans and superintended the work for the first labo- 
ratory. Professor Curtis has given u.scful years to the 
collection and preparation of samples of our local trees, 



TEACHING 161 

and the Chandler Chemical Museum will be a permanent 
and fitting memorial to the man who gathered its con- 
tents together. 

For a time it looked as though these multitudinous 
activities were crowding out, or turning over to begin- 
ners, the more prosaic duties of undergraduate teaching, 
but the pendulum is swinging to-day in the other direc- 
tion, and the words of Solomon, although addressed to 
the student rather than to the teacher, express fairly 
enough the present attitude of our faculties: " Take 
fast hold of instruction, let her not go; keep her, for 
she is thy life." In official words: " We are trying 
by increasing the compensation of the undergraduate 
teachers, by adding to their dignity and prestige in vari- 
ous ways, to make it clear that we put as high a value 
upon first-class teaching as we do upon research and 
investigation. We hold that the two things are differ- 
ent, but we hesitate to subordinate either to the other. ' ' 
Appointments to the undergraduate faculties are now of 
short tenure, to the end that the men who actually con- 
trol the College will always be the men who do the col- 
lege work. In the Report of 1857 I came upon the 
following characteristic pronouncement of Lieber 's : " A 
good and true teacher ought to possess the solar quality 
of shedding light, and warmth-evoking light. ' ' The rela- 
tion of the great teacher to the great investigator has 
been well compared to that between the great musical 
performer and the composer. 

The College has come to recognize a real danger in 
the careless appointment of young men to be tried out 
on the undergraduate. In the first place, if he is not 
good enough to be called elsewhere and does not die or 
commit a crime, the chances are excellent for good- 
natured promotion as the years go on, until such a man 



1G2 TEACHERS AND EXECUTIVES 

is moved up to a position where his mediocrity becomes 
painfully evident, not as at first to the undergraduate 
only, but to the entire academic community. In the 
opinion of one of our men, who is deliberately giving 
his life to undergraduate teaching in the face of blan- 
dishments from his colleagues in the graduate schools, 
it is not only as dangerous to start a thousand-dollar 
man in the College as in the University, but the almost 
unvarying practice based on the contrary assumption has 
done much to lower the dignity of college teaching and 
make promotions seem always from undergraduate to 
graduate instruction. 

Our community has a pretty shrewd idea as to who 
are its strong men, though they may not make the 
longest speeches in faculty meetings or be pictured in 
the popular magazines. When promotions are an- 
nounced, we sometimes think that we know better even 
than the trustees, but on the whole the judgment of our 
overlords corresponds pretty closely with our own. 

The close life of the University has its hard side when 
the ranks are broken by death : 

" But yesterday we saw him face to face, 
Colleague and comrade, gentle, modest, wise ; 
In vain to-day in his accustomed place. 
We wait to win a welcome from his eyes." 

It is hard even when the one who has gone has enjoyed 
long years of distinguished service, as did Rood and 
Price. It is harder when, like Boyesen and Merriam 
and Mayo-Smith and Canfield, they had barely passed 
the zenith of their useful careers. It is hardest of all 
when they are struck down in early life, with the future 



IN MEMORIAM 163 

shining bright before them. In my own experience of 
a dozen years, Columbia has lost Tufts and Townsend, 
brilliant physicists ; Earle and Olcott, classical scholars of 
distinction ; Tucker and Carmalt, Hiss and Herter, from 
the front ranks of the Medical School. One of our finest 
academic addresses was Herter 's on " Idealism in Medi- 
cine." It was of Miller, as a student a famous inter- 
collegiate athlete, and as a teacher and investigator a 
tower of strength in the School of Chemistry, that Frank 
Dempster Sherman wrote the lines quoted above. Mac- 
Dowell's fatal illness was peculiarly tragic. He was rec- 
ognized in the University as a man not only of genius, 
but of rare and beautiful character. The circumstances 
of his leaving its service first revealed the nature and 
progress of this illness and his breakdown filled 
every member of our academic community with the sin- 
cerest sorrow. The Union Seminary has recently lost 
two strong men. President Hall and Professor G. W. 
Knox, who had made themselves dear to the University 
community. Knox in particular had voluntarily con- 
ducted a college course in religion, which brought him 
the esteem and affection of the undergraduates and 
their teachers. 

No loss, however, came so close to many of us as 
that of George Rice Carpenter, whose simplicity and 
modesty of character disguised, until the appraisal that 
comes with death, the fact that he had been not alone the 
most lovable of companions, the most helpful of friends to 
students and colleagues alike, but also one of the most 
powerful forces in making Columbia what she is to-day. 
* * No one could be more patient than he. He achieved his 
end by no rapid flight, but by overcoming barriers one 
by one, quietly, systematically, carefully, without loss 
of energy and with wonderful self-control. Few minds 



1G4 TEACHERS AND EXECUTIVES 

have united more method with more eagerness than his. 
His firmness accomplished much. Ilis courtesy, humor, 
and tact were alike unfailing and marvelous." A me- 
morial of the kind which he himself would have ap- 
proved has been erected by his friends in the George 
Rice Carpenter Library of the Department of English. 

As one looks back it seems as though Columbia has 
had almost more than her share not only of distinguished 
but of picturesque personalities. There are, I may say 
in passing, men as picturesque in the faculties to-day, 
but for one of their colleagues to call attention to such 
picturesqueness might give rise to misunderstanding. 
"We know, for example, that one professor, who shall be 
nameless, arbitrarily passed certain " oldest living un- 
dergraduates " after repeated failures, upon the stu- 
dents' word of honor that they would never attempt 
to practice their profession. Another case is that of the 
assistant who was called upon to conduct a minor gradu- 
ate course because the professor was absent on leave, 
and who formally enrolled himself as one of his own 
pupils, and at the conclusion of the course claimed credit 
for it toward the doctor's degree. 

The men who stand out in the memory of the old boys 
were not all professors. To the students Stephen Weeks 
— janitor, assistant librarian, proctor — was for years 
about all that represented devolved authority. His sym- 
pathies, I fear, w^ere often on the side of the offender. 
In those days, for example, no one might smoke on 
the College grounds. In administering the law, Weeks 
would call the culprit, whom of course he knew perfectly 
well — for in those days there were not seven thousand 
nor seven hundred students — and, producing a memo- 
randum book, would say, " Mr. So-and-so " (I must not 



EARLIER MEN 165 

be more specific, for my informant is now a trustee), 
** Mr. So-and-so, you are smoking; please give me your 
name "; and he would solemnly write down " John 
Doe " or whatever the inventive student was pleased to 
tell him. 

" Dean " Singer in my day held court in a janitorial 
cubby-hole in the entrance to the Forty-ninth Street Ham- 
ilton Hall, and used indeed to perform certain unofficial 
but essentially diaconal functions. The new site gave 
to the University the services of a dear old Scotchman 
named Spencer, who, thinking of the old Bloomingdale 
days, always referred to the students as * ' the inmates. ' ' 
At the Medical School, Boag, a Confederate veteran, 
matriculated more than five thousand doctors in his 
forty-one years of service, and remembered them all 
when they came back to the " P. & S. " George Fisher, 
a whaler whom Chandler had brought from New Bed- 
ford, and who rose to the position of University bursar, 
holds, particularly in the hearts of the School of Mines 
graduates, a similar place. 

Our list of professorships and the titles of our fellow- 
ships, museums, and the like carry back our thoughts, 
as it was intended they should, to the men of former 
years, and it is pleasant to study in detail these bonds 
between the past and the present. Janeway's profes- 
sorship in the practice of medicine, for example, takes 
us back to John Bard, Huguenot in race and Royalist in 
politics, and the beloved physician of George Washing- 
ton. Seligman, himself a member of a famous family 
of bankers, harks back to McViekar, who formulated the 
principles on which our national banking system rests, 
and who served as professor for forty-seven years — may 
Seligman serve as long ! From the many-sided Chandler 
we look back to the many-sided Mitchill, who as a pro- 



166 TEACHERS AND EXECUTIVES 

fessor was the first in America to attack the sanctity 
of phlogiston, and later as United States Senator was 
largely responsible for the Lewis and Clark expedition. 
In mathematics Keyser is linked to Adrain, who fought 
as a boy in the Irish Rebellion, and who was prominent 
in his day in mathematical scholarship and as an inspirer 
of scholarship in his students, notably Professors Ander- 
son and Renwick. Renwick's son, by the way, born on 
the old College grounds, was at the time of his death, 
a year or so ago, the oldest Columbia alumnus. 

The appointment recently of Harper to the Torrey 
Professorship reminds us of the curious reason why John 
Torrey became one of the really great American scien- 
tists. His father was a prison-keeper, and it was 
when the botanist Eaton was incarcerated for debt that 
the boy became first interested in nature. Dunning 's 
chair takes us back to Lieber, the friend of Humboldt. 
His academic and public services have been dealt with 
elsewhere, but not his very human personality and par- 
ticularly his innocent vanity. One of our alumni has 
now a photograph of the old man stripped to the waist, 
which had been taken lest the lines of his magnificent 
torso, providentally spared at Waterloo, should be lost to 
posterity. 

Rood's degree was held back for a half century be- 
cause he upset the life of a venerable neighbor by pierc- 
ing the dial of the college clock with an arrow. When 
the degree came it was an honorary one, conferred at 
the Yale Bi-centennial. Rood extended help to Merriam 
and other colleagues here by his ingenious electrotypes 
of ancient gems. As an artist he was clever enough to 
fake an antique which fooled the sharpest of them. It 
is amusing to remember that he became an unwilling 
apostle of French impressionism, when Claude Monet 



EARLIER MEN 167 

discovered and devoured a translation of his book on 
chromatics. Rood's predecessor, McCulloh, for a time 
under an official cloud because, obeying the dictates of 
his conscience, he fought for his native South in the 
Civil War, is now remembered as a man of great power 
and of vivid personality. 

The obiter dicta of Egleston, who, although the dis- 
tinguished founder of the School of Mines, was known 
to the irreverent as " Tommy Rocks," and those of 
Short, known as ' ' Saw-my-leg-off ' ' Short, were secretly 
printed and may be found by the curious in the Colum- 
biana collection of the library. 

The Medical School has always had its men of mark. 
Following Bard and Mitchill, to name but a few, came 
Parker, Clark, and Dalton, the first American who gave 
up medical practice for teaching and research ; and later, 
Stephens, Delafield, McBurney, Jacobi, and Bull. Mc- 
Lane as professor, president, and, after the merger, 
dean, was a natural leader, and that, during the last 
ten years of his life, he was out of sympathy with the 
school he did so much to build up, is a source of great 
regret to his old colleagues. 

Dwight was the Law School for thirty years. His 
successor. Keener, was almost an equally commanding 
figure, but the methods of the two men were diametrically 
opposed. Men sat at Dwight 's feet, waiting quietly 
for the law to come to them, and it came. With Keener, 
on the other hand, the classroom was a battlefield. The 
student were flouted and buffeted until, fighting mad, 
at white heat they learned the law. 

Professor Ware was from his appointment until his 
retirement a decade ago one of the most delightful mem- 
bers of our academic family. It was he who wittily but 
none the less truly prophesied that the move from Forty- 



168 TEACHERS AND EXECUTIVES 

ninth Street would transform Columbia from a private 
to a public institution. 

Two other men, still living but no longer in service, 
must be mentioned: Woodward, now president of the 
Carnegie Institution, was notable primarily for his in- 
fluence on his colleagues, and particularly upon the 
younger men, to whom he always gave the best he had. 
On his periodic visits to the Faculty Club nowadays the 
whole company rises to grasp his hand, and wherever he 
sits now, as formerly, the sparks are sure to fly. Wood- 
berrj% who, as the mood was on him, would lecture better 
or worse than any man I have ever sat under, devoted 
himself, on the other hand, almost wholly to his students, 
and upon many of them his influence was extraordinary. 
The evidences of its lasting quality are to be found in 
the recent formation, in his honor, among the students 
of ten years and more ago, of a Woodberry Society. 

The greatest factor in preserving the unity of our 
traditions has been the long and overlapping terms of 
service of three distinguished professors, each a son of 
the College, each a man of picturesque and lovable 
personality, and each, to use Dr. Alderman's phrase, 
endowed with the serene unfailing youth of men who 
think clearly, will resolutely, and work joyfully toward 
good ends. In 1820, Charles Anthon joined the faculty, 
to serve for forty-seven years. With his silk hat and his 
cane, his sharp tongue and his kind heart, Anthon was 
the dominating figure for many years. Poe happened 
to meet him, and wrote: " He would impress one at first 
sight with the idea of his being no ordinary man. He 
has qualities indeed which would have insured him emi- 
nent success in almost any pursuit ; and there are times 
in which his friends are half-disposed to regret his ex- 



ANTHON, DRISLER, VAN AMRINGE 169 

elusive devotion to classical literature." Anthon was 
the first man to make generally known in America the 
results of German classical scholarship, and his personal 
educational ideas must have been excellent, to judge by 
his vigorous testimony before the trustees in 1857. Stu- 
dents, colleagues, and trustees all feared him, particu- 
larly on his gouty days, but they all loved him. One 
of the ofiScial records of student disorder that I came 
upon refers to " tumultuous cheering for the person 
they call Bull Anthon." 

In 1843, Anthon 's pupil, Henry Drisler, became a 
tutor and was in active service until 1894. Drisler, to 
quote President Batler, " loved Columbia — as he served 
it — with his whole nature. To him its name was not an 
empty word, but rather the symbol of whatsoever is true, 
whatsoever is lovely, whatsoever is of good repute. 
Loyalty to Columbia, to its traditions, its policies, 
its hopes, and its ideals was of the very fiber of his 
being. ' ' 

The third of the trio, known before his beard grew 
white as Barbarossa, joined the staff immediately upon 
his graduation in 1860, and his retirement from active 
service, fifty years later, was marked by expressions of 
enthusiastic loyalty and affection that it falls to the lot 
of few men to receive. To anyone who has known any- 
thing at all about Columbia College during the last half 
century, it is needless to describe the personal qualities 
of Professor Van Araringe, and in any event it would 
be practically impossible. He and his companion, Chand- 
ler, have been so completely appropriated by the alumni 
as patron saints that it may be said without prejudice to 
their academic service that their most striking useful- 
ness has been in cementing the ties between the alumni 
and their Alma Mater. 



170 TEACHERS AND EXECUTIVES 

Four of the twelve presidents were Columbia alumni : 
Bishop Moore, 1801-1811; his nephew, Nathaniel F. 
Moore, 1842-1849, and the two most recent incumbents. 
Three were Yale men: Samuel Johnson, 1754-1762; his 
son, William Samuel Johnson, 1787-1811, and Frederick 
A. P. Barnard, 1864-1889. Myles Cooper, 1763-1775, 
was from Oxford ; William Harris, 1811-1829, from Ilar- 
vard; Charles Wharton (whose connection in 1811 with 
the College was of the slightest) studied at a Jesuit 
College. William A. Duer, 1830-1847, and Charles King, 
1849-1864, were not college graduates. Six only of 
the presidents were clergymen, which, compared with the 
number of presidents of other colleges who were clergy- 
men, is relatively a small proportion. 

Samuel Johnson, the intimate friend of Bishop Berke- 
ley and Benjamin Franklin, was the foremost educator 
of his time in America, and a philosopher of distinction, 
as his manuscripts now in the Columbia library show 
even more clearly than his printed works. President 
Oilman has said that Johnson's grave at Stratford, 
Conn., is one of the shrines of American education. 

Myles Cooper, who was called from Oxford in 1763 
with a view to his succeeding Johnson, was a brilliant 
classical scholar and an inspiring teacher. But New 
York was no place in those days for the belligerent Roy- 
alist that he proved himself to be. The story has often 
been told of his escape from the College (in his night- 
shirt, if the tradition be true) while his youthful pupil 
and antagonist, Alexander Hamilton, loyally held the 
mob in check before the College gate. Cooper's poem, 
not, it must be confessed, an immortal masterpiece, 
describing the occurrence is extant; a single stanza will 
suffice to show its quality. 



THE PRESIDENTS 171 

** Not yet content, but hoping still 
Their impious purpose to fulfill, 
They force each yielding door; 
And while their curses load my head 
With piercing steel they probe the bed 
And thirst for human gore." 

William Samuel Johnson, with whom, by the way, his 
even more famous namesake, the lexicographer, was 
proud to trace a relationship, was a figure of national 
importance and probably the first English-speaking lay- 
man to be made a college president. It was he who, 
with the aid of Morris and Hamilton, revised the style 
of the Constitution of the United States and arranged 
its articles; and it was he who first proposed the or- 
ganization of the United States Senate as a distinct 
body, in which the State sovereignties could be equally 
represented and guarded. While president he served 
as the first senator from Connecticut. 

Benjamin Moore was primarily rector of Trinity 
Church and, later, bishop of the diocese, and only sec- 
ondarily president of Columbia College; and his fame 
rests rather upon his theological than his academic repu- 
tation. The thorough overhaulings which the College 
program and organization received in 1810 were due 
to the trustees rather than to the president. 

On Moore's resignation, in 1811, the experiment was 
made of putting the College in direct charge of one of 
these same trustees, who as a Presbyterian could not be 
president without alienating the Trinity Church grant 
of land. John M. Mason was made a sort of Mayor of 
the Palace, with the title, created ad hoc, of Provost. 
Mason was a young man of established ability and en- 
ergy. He was instrumental in securing from the State 



172 TEACHERS AND EXECUTIVES 

the Botanical Garden, which is to-day the most valuable 
item in the endowment, but he was a little too vigorous 
as an administrator, and the College breathed a sigh 
of relief when he resigned in 1816 and President Harris, 
whom he had previously overshadowed, took the reins. 
Harris apparently made an excellent president. An- 
thon, in 1857, looked back upon his administration as 
the heroic age of the College. 

During the days of Judge Duer and Professor Na- 
thaniel F. ]\Ioore, who succeeded him, the College was 
at its hardest straits. The New York University 
(founded during Duer's presidency under a former 
trustee of Columbia) eclipsed the older institution, stu- 
dents decreased, and the college debt mounted. Duer 
and Moore served faithfully, but the times were out of 
joint. 

The next president, whose lines were east in pleasanter 
places, was Charles King, banker, merchant, journalist, 
and man of the world. His father, Rufus King, had been 
one of the great Columbia trustees. During Rufus 
King's service as Minister to England, his son had been 
educated at Harrow, where he was a contemporary of 
Byron, and elsewhere abroad. He had returned to fight 
in the "War of 1812. King was a fine figure, and, though 
no longer a young man when he became president, he 
was full of vigor. Indeed, after his retirement as presi- 
dent, he rode to hounds upon his trips abroad to visit 
his daughter, Mme. Waddington. An athlete himself, 
he was the first to interest himself in student sports. 
It has been said of King that he had strong likes and 
dislikes, the former of which he plainly showed, the 
latter of which he concealed as well as he could. 

Of the later presidents, I have endeavored to give 
some picture in the earlier chapters of this book. 



VI 

STUDENTS AND STUDENT LIFE 

The twofold Relation. Religion and Morals. Fraternities. 
Academic Groupings. Problems of Assimilation. Undergraduate 
Enterprises. Records of Earlier Days. Athletic Sports. Music, 
Drama, Debating. Publications. Enrollment Figures. Student 
Diversity. Self-Grovernment. Alumni Affairs. 

Mr. Gellett Burgess might well have included in 
his collection of bromidic utterances : * ' Oh, yes, Colum- 
bia has splendid buildings and great professors, but then, 
you know, it has no student life." As a matter of fact, 
if anything, it has too much student life. It has even 
plenty of the conventionalized college life to which the 
Bromide refers. Some of these student works will be 
noted in the chapter on an academic year, but these 
show but a few among dozens of different kinds of stu- 
dent inter-relations, which, like a tangled skein, cross 
one another at so many points that a clear description 
is very difficult if not impossible. 

At Columbia it must be granted that college life is 
likely to be an elective rather than a prescribed course. 
For various reasons many of the students take little or 
no part in it, but to say, as many do, that the average 
undergraduate does not have it and have it abundantly 
is simply to state what is not the fact. 

The relation of any student to the student body has 
two sides, that with the students as a whole and that 
with the groups which, in academic work, are doing the 
same things that he is doing. While naturally the closest 
connection will be found in the latter case, there are 

173 



174 STUDENTS AND STUDENT LIFE 

many factors at Columbia to tie the diverse body together 
as a whole. Each year more than a hundred students 
enter the different graduate and professional schools of 
the University after graduation from Columbia College, 
and the number of Barnard graduates is also consid- 
erable. Another strong element cutting across school 
and college life is common residence in the dormitories. 
About one thousand students now live in university 
halls, and over five hundred others in fraternity houses 
or boarding places for students near the University. 
This has all come about within the last decade. In 1901 
the number who lived in the immediate neighborhood 
was less than four hundred. 

Another factor which binds together the students of 
all parts of the University is that of the religious life 
and the interests allied thereto. On the devotional side 
the center is, of course, the beautiful St. Paul's Chapel, 
where voluntary services are held daily. The practical 
side of religious life is centered in Earl Hall, a building 
given by the late W. E. Dodge in memory of his son, 
which has some forty thousand visits each year from 
students. Earl Hall is administered by the Young Men's 
Christian Association of New York ; it is closely identified 
with settlement work in various parts of the city, and 
the students, regardless of their religious beliefs, do 
much work of this kind. 

Beside the Christian Association, which has branches 
or allies at Teachers College, Barnard College, the 
Medical School, and at the Summer Camp, there is a 
flourishing club of the Catholic students of the Uni- 
versity, a Churchman's Association, a IMenorah Society 
for the Jewish students, and even a club of Christian 
Scientists. The Socialists' Club might be mentioned in 



RELIGION AND MORALS 175 

this connection, for to most of its members Socialism ap- 
pears to be a kind of religion. 

The general attitude of the students toward religion 
is far more sympathetic than is generally supposed by 
the superficial observer. The amount of orthodoxy may 
be disappointing to the orthodox, but among the more 
serious students there is to be found almost uniformly 
clear idealism, remarkable appreciation of the highest 
standards of service, and an acceptance of them, as 
well as a real desire to know the truth about religion 
and to gain from it inspiration and support. 

This may be as good a place as any to speak of gen- 
eral moral conditions. In this matter city institutions 
have an undeservedly bad name. President Butler has 
pointed out that the " notion that a great city abounds 
in necessary temptations of which small industrial towns, 
semi-rural, and rural communities are free, is an illusory 
one. A young man of intelligence and character can 
keep himself free from contamination in one place as 
well as in another, and there is no ground whatever for 
the apparently widespread belief that to send a young 
man to a college in a great city is to subject him to a 
kind, an amount, and a variety of temptation that would 
be spared him if he were elsewhere. A healthy human 
environment, clean companionship, and wide-appealing 
interests and opportunities of a worthy sort are what 
will do most for a young man, and these are precisely 
what college life in a great city can furnish." 

The basal temptation for the young man is the per- 
fectly natural and normal temptation to find diversion. 
The wealth of opportunity for profitable diversion open 
to the student is not the least of the claims of the city 
institution. A frank student who once discussed the 
matter with me put it in this way : * * In the country a 



176 STUDENTS AND STUDENT LIFE 

fellow has only an occasional chance to be bad and he 
has to take the opportunity when the time comes. In 
the city he can go to the devil any time that he wants 
and he puts it off from day to day just as he puts off 
the things he ought to do, like his prescribed reading and 
his mathematics review." 

Another bridge extending from school to school is 
the system of Greek letter fraternities. The fraternities 
at Columbia date back to the Park Place days, Alpha 
Delta Phi having received a charter in 1836. About five 
years afterward came Psi Upsilon and Delta Phi. The 
question of priority between these two became acute 
when, for some years, the chapter of Alpha Delta Phi 
lapsed and the controversy strongly colored undergradu- 
ate politics in the sixties and seventies. Delta Psi was 
founded at Columbia in 1847. Twelve more chapters 
were organized at Forty-ninth Street, and there are now 
thirty fraternities, each maintaining its own chapter 
house, and one small but influential senior society. This 
is too many, particularly in view of the high cost of 
maintenance in New York, and the limited resources of 
most of the students. There should be some kind of 
co-operation in purchasing; and a private fraternity 
apartment building, with one floor to each society, would 
prove a good investment in more ways than one. 

The influence of the men 's fraternities has become dis- 
tinctly better throughout the country within the last 
decade and many of the dreadful things that are now 
said about them are said by persons who have little or 
no knowledge of present conditions. I have found most 
of the chapters at Columbia to be distinct aids in main- 
taining scholarship standards and more likely to keep 
their younger members upon the path of virtue than to 



FRATERNITIES 177 

turn them from it. They have no aristocracy of wealth, 
many of the most active members being self-supporting, 
and they give a welcome home to the fraternity men 
coming by the score each year from other colleges. 
On the whole, I feel that the fraternities at Columbia 
are a source of good. They have, of course, touches of 
intolerance and snobbishness, the older societies look- 
ing down upon the younger, as all look down upon the 
" barbarians." 

There are also the customary honorary and profes- 
sional societies. For women there are six chapters at 
Teachers College and at present eight at Barnard, al- 
though these latter are by faculty order to go out of 
existence when the present initiates have graduated. 

Turning from the general factors in student social life 
to particular schools, the spirit in the Schools of Mines, 
Engineering, and Chemistry has from their foundation 
been strong. Apparently it is a fine type of boy that 
is attracted by the engineering profession, and the men 
are bound together by the long hours in the laboratory 
and shop, and particularly by the common life at the 
summer camp and on geological and mining trips. The 
Law School presents a compact body of well-trained men 
of serious purpose and, relatively speaking, mature 
years, the average age at entrance being nearly twenty- 
three. Some few of the students, particularly those who 
have come from the College, do take part in undergradu- 
ate affairs, a large proportion, even for Columbia, spend 
part of their time in earning money, but the general im- 
pression is that law students, except when they are 
asleep, are either studying their subjects or talking 
about them to one another. The law seems to be a won- 
derfully satisfying type of intellectual pabulum. A 



178 STUDENTS AND STUDENT LIFE 

selected body of the students edit what is one of the 
most creditable publications of the entire University, 
the Columbia Law Review, to which legal luminaries 
from all over the world are glad to contribute. 

Except for some few who live in the dormitories, the 
students of medicine and pharmacy have but little 
chance to participate in the general life of the Uni- 
versity. This is unfortunate for all concerned, but it is 
hoped that at some time in the future the whole 
University may be brought together. The students of 
medicine regard themselves as the hardest worked mem- 
bers of the University, and they are probably right. 
Whether they would not become even better doctors if 
the pace were not quite so swift, is a question which from 
time to time arises in the mind of the outsider. The 
faculty has indeed voted to reduce the hour-schedule con- 
siderably for the future. 

If I were to be pinned down to state which part of 
the University has the most highly organized and the 
most enthusiastic student life, I should be com- 
pelled to give the palm to Barnard College. While the 
columns of the men's daily are filled with appeals and 
even threats about " getting the men out " — and this, 
I think, is true in general of the publications of men's 
colleges — the problem at Barnard seems to be to keep 
the girls from plunging into too many activities and 
devoting too much time to them. They are the best 
actors in the University, they devise the cleverest 
" stunts," and their Greek games furnish one of the most 
picturesque performances of the year. 

Teachers College, like Barnard, has a vigorous exist- 
ence of its own and an intense corporate spirit. In 
the words of Dean Russell : * ' Loyalty to one 's Alma 
Mater may mean much or little, but in our case it is 



PROBLEMS OF ASSIMILATION 179 

not based upon adventitious circumstances. We have no 
athletic sports, no crew, no football, baseball, no glee 
club, no debates, and no intercollegiate leagues. In fact, 
we are without any of the accessories commonly believed 
to be of importance to college life, yet we manage to 
have a good time and find something to do every day." 
The graduate students at Teachers College include some 
of the finest material in the entire student body. When 
men have thrown up a good position to take a year or 
more of academic work at very short commons, in order 
to break through the lock-step of their profession, they 
are likely to prove worth-while students and companions. 
The summer has a life of its own. The director has 
taken particular pains to organize student gatherings 
of all sorts, and the arrangements made seem entirely to 
the mind of the students. I know of no other body of 
men and women the size of an army brigade that get 
to know one another so promptly. 

One of the commonest references that one hears with 
regard to Columbia is that its position at the gateway 
of European immigration makes it socially uninviting to 
students who come from homes of refinement. The form 
which the inquiry takes in these days of slowly-dying 
race prejudice is, " Isn't Columbia overrun with Euro- 
pean Jews, who are most unpleasant persons socially? " 
The question is so often asked and so often answered in 
the affirmative by those who have made no effort to 
ascertain the facts that it will do no harm to speak 
frankly about it. In the first place, Columbia is not 
** overrun " with Jews any more than it is with Roman 
Catholics or Episcopalians. The University is open to 
any student of good moral character who can satisfy the 
entrance requirements, without limitation of race or 



180 STUDENTS AND STUDENT LIFE 

creed, and it is to be hoped that this always will be so. 
No questions are asked and no records kept of the race 
or religion of incoming students, but it is evident that 
the proportion of Jewish students is decreasing rather 
than increasing. Each year more Jewish parents are 
realizing the advantages to be obtained from sending 
their boys away from home. The family and intimate 
social life of the Jews is so intense that there is a real 
danger of social inbreeding; family and racial traits 
which ought to be minimized are accentuated, and the 
Jewish prejudice against the Gentile, which is as real 
a thing as the prejudice in the other direction, is main- 
tained. 

By far the majority of the Jewish students who do 
come to Columbia are desirable students in every way. 
What most people regard as a racial problem is really 
a social problem. The Jews who have had the advan- 
tages of decent social surroundings for a generation 
or two are entirely satisfactory companions. Their in- 
tellectual ability, and particularly their intellectual curi- 
osity, are above the average, and the teachers are unani- 
mous in saying that their presence in the classroom is 
distinctly desirable. There are, indeed, Jewish students 
of another type who have not had the social advantages 
of their more fortunate fellows. Often they come from 
an environment which in any stock less fired with ambi- 
tion would have put the idea of higher education wholly 
out of the question. Some of these are not particularly 
pleasant companions, but the total number is not large, 
and every reputable institution aspiring to public serv- 
ice must stand ready to give to those of probity and good 
moral character the benefits which they are making great 
sacrifices to obtain. 

"With the rapidly growing improvement in the eco- 



UNDERGRADUATE ENTERPRISES 181 

nomic condition of the Jews throughout the country, 
the problem of their assimilation in undergraduate life 
is one which will have to be faced by every college of 
the first class — and they will go to no other. It is hard, 
in fact it is impossible, to do away in a day with the 
prejudices of twenty centuries. It is particularly diffi- 
cult in the intolerant period of youth, but harder prob- 
lems have been faced and solved by the American 
community. 

The student's real education depends in large meas- 
ure on his student life as a whole. Anything the insti- 
tution can do to insure the wholesomeness and sanity 
of this life and to vitalize it and enrich it, is educational 
work of the highest significance. There is a Filipino 
riddle in which a pair of shoes is called two boats with 
but a single passenger. I often think that this gives 
a good picture of the American undergraduate. In spite 
of statements to the contrary, in general he insists on 
wearing the shoe of intellectual training and wearing 
it pretty hard, but he is equally persistent in wearing 
the shoe of undergraduate activities. The forming of 
organizations of all kinds, and particularly the holding 
of offices therein, seems to gratify a fundamental human 
cra\dng. The current student's year-book includes a 
hundred clubs and societies, and there are perhaps as 
many others in more or less permanent existence. 

This is a greater number than can be adequately sup- 
ported by the student body. For one thing, the city 
itself offers many of the means of legitimate diversion 
which in the country must be provided by the students 
themselves, many of our organizations being purely imi- 
tative rather than supplying an actual student need. 
Then, too, the students have relatively little time to put 



182 STUDENTS AND STUDENT LIFE 

into student organizations. The academic standards are 
high and the hours, particularly in the scientific courses, 
are long. Almost a third of the students have to earn 
money as well as study. 

In the eighties and nineties the Columbia students 
■were willing to live their own life — and it was a vivid and 
profitable one — largely regardless of student conventions 
elsewhere. In fact, for some years, thanks to brilliant 
and venomous student journalism, Columbia was at 
swords' points with nearly every other Eastern college. 
During the brief reign of football, which began in 1899, 
there was a strong tendency to mold the college com- 
munity into the standard pattern. To-day again it 
would seem that the elements of college life that best 
flourish here are the unconventional rather than the con- 
ventional, although the controversy over a recent article 
on this subject by Professor John Erskine, himself an 
alumnus, made it clear that students and alumni are 
far from unanimous in believing that this is true, or if 
true, desirable. 

As a matter of fact, I think the best way to describe 
the actual situation is to say that at Columbia a student 
group of the conventional undergraduate interests and 
opportunities, in numbers about the size of Hamilton 
or Bowdoin, is imbedded in and intertwined with the 
large and more varied and individual student life sur- 
rounding it. In his article Erskine said, among other 
things, that : ' * Spirit of the conventional sort Columbia 
has lacked ; in the atmosphere of the most sophisticated 
city in America, a parochial satisfaction in dead alumni 
and a few live mannerisms has not prospered. . . . 
It is the presence of the city at her doors that is creating 
the new Columbia spirit." He pointed his moral by a 



EECORDS OF EAKLIER DAYS 183 

personal reminiscence. Meeting a student who some- 
times did typewriting for him, he was politely asked 
as to the fate of a certain story which the latter had 
copied some time before, and which, as a matter of fact, 
had not as yet found a publisher. The student did not 
seem astonished to learn this. He had himself thought 
it too psychological, and he went on to say that as he 
copied it a plot of his own had come to him, and for the 
resulting story he had that morning received a com- 
fortable check. 

For the best students, at any rate, a good part of 
the life outside the classroom is spent in informal con- 
tact with the instructors. The system of prosectorships 
at the Medical School, the common interests of the 
Columbia Law Review, the work of the student assistants 
at Barnard College, the informal work of the various 
departmental journal clubs, and the close contact of 
preceptor and student in the work of the honor courses 
in the college, all tend in this direction, and much of 
the paid work done by students is of a character which 
adds to their scholarly equipment. In the scientific 
departments many of the students are taken into the field 
by their instructors. Of the student clubs, some of the 
best — as, for example, the literary coterie known as 
Boar's Head, the Politics Club, the Chemical Society, 
and the Deutscher Verein — show the beneficent influence 
of a guiding faculty hand. 

To understand the student life of to-day, one must 
know something of the earlier epochs of the institution. 
To be sure, Columbia is the only one of the larger insti- 
tutions that has been transplanted bodily twice within 
a half century, and these transplantings have marked 
sharp changes in the manner of student life. The influ- 



184 STUDENTS AND STUDENT LIFE 

ence of the older days, nevertheless, is felt in many ways. 
For example, the students at Park Place had a reputa- 
tion for formal and courtly manners, and, although this 
cannot be said to have persisted in toto, Columbia is still 
about the only college where professors and students 
touch their hats when they meet. 

Much of what we know about the student life in the 
pre-Revolutionary days is gathered from the full and 
illuminating laws passed for the governance of the stu- 
dents. From those of 1755 we can see that there was 
danger of cock-fighting, card-playing, and dice-throwing 
among the students, from the establishment of a fine not 
to exceed five shillings for these offenses. For the ap- 
parently less serious crimes of fighting, maiming, slan- 
dering or grievously abusing any person, a smaller fine 
of three shillings was established. Among the rules of 
1763 we find that the junior students shall pay such 
respect to the seniors, and all of them to the president, 
professors, fellows and tutors, as the said president, 
etc., shall direct and under such penalties as they shall 
think proper to prescribe. 

In 1773, Washington entered his stepson and ward, 
John Parke Custis, as a student. The best contemporary 
description that we have of the life at the College is 
contained in the boy's letters. 

* * It is now time to give you a short plan of my apart- 
ments and of my way of living. I have a large parlour 
with two studys or closets, each large enough to contain 
a bed, trunk and couple of chairs, one I sleep in and 
the other Joe [presumably his servant] calls his, my 
chamber and parlour are papered, with a cheap tho' 
very pretty paper, the other is painted; my furniture 
consists of six chairs, 2 tables, with a few paultry Pic- 
tures. I have an excellent bed, and in short everything 



RECORDS OF EARLIER DAYS 185 

very convenient and clever. I generally get up about 
six or a little after, dress myself and go to Chappel, by 
the time that prayers are over, Joe has me a little break- 
fast, to which I sit down very contentedly, & after eating 
heartyly, I thank God and go to my Studys, with which 
I am employed till twelve, then I take a walk and return 
about one, dine with the Professors and after Dinner 
study till six at which time the Bell always rings for 
Prayers, they being over College is broak up and then we 
take what amusement we please." 

In this period of course the really significant thing 
was the way the young College caught fire from the 
flames of the Revolution, and the most vivid picture of 
its college life has already been mentioned — the young 
Hamilton holding the mob at the College gate in order 
that his president might have an opportunity to escape. 

There was apparently some kind of debating society 
as early as 1766, but the first evidence of any formal 
organization is found in 1784, when the students, with 
some others, formed a society for the purpose of improv- 
ing themselves in polite literature. One must not forget 
that these students were boys, and young boys at that. 
Only a century ago one of the students graduated at 
the age of thirteen. When about 1800 the College build- 
ing was given up wholly to classroom work and no dor- 
mitories were maintained, the students had very little 
opportunity for a common undergraduate life. Such 
headquarters as they had seem to have been the cake- 
shop at the comer of Church and Murray streets. Col- 
lege enthusiasm, however, was not wanting in spite of 
unfavorable conditions. The question of a semi-centen- 
nial celebration was first broached at a meeting of the 
students held in 1836. The two literary societies were 
active, and I have heard, from one who is now a distin- 
guished trustee, of at least one series of informal gather- 



186 STUDENTS AND STUDENT LIFE 

ings in a room on Canal Street where the refreshments 
consisted of coffee and sausages, but where the talk was 
upon more profitable matters than the prattle about 
intercollegiate athletics and professional baseball which 
to-day wastes so many of the precious hours of youth. 
A boy who neglects his study to practice athletics has 
at least a vigorous body to show for it, but one who neg- 
lects his study to talk about them has little but an empty 
mind. Indeed, at that period there were no athletics to 
talk about, unless one includes billiards, w'hich was 
played by those who could afford it, and snowball fights 
in the winter. 

Although professors like " Bull " Anthon knew well 
enough how to preserve classroom discipline, the disor- 
der in some of the other classes was scandalous, and fac- 
ulty and trustees devoted apparently most of their time 
to unintelligent methods of coping with it. They had, 
indeed, little else to do, for the curriculum was appar- 
ently fixed for all time and there was no money to spend 
on enlargements. Unfortunately they believed too fully 
(as Francis Wayland told them in 1857) in the efficacy 
of laws, and student crime continued unchecked. 

President Moore used to read at chapel any notices 
that might be handed to him — there was no Spectator in 
those days — and some young imp had a job printer set 
up a notice in the conventional form of the president's 
own death and the announcement for the funeral serv- 
ices, and then had this, in the guise of a newspaper 
clipping, slipped in among the official notices. The 
absent-minded president had read well through his own 
obituary notice before its purport dawned upon him. 

General Charles King, who left the College as a fresh- 
man at tlie outbreak of the Civil War, has written of 
the college life in the early sixties at Forty-ninth Street, 



RECORDS OF EARLIER DAYS 187 

and particularly of the martial zeal which filled all 
hearts from the president (his grandfather) down. The 
war, indeed, came close to the College in more ways than 
one, for the buildings narrowly escaped destruction dur- 
ing the draft riots. 

Technically speaking, the institution ceased to be local, 
not to say parochial, when the Law School was estab- 
lished and the Medical School rejoined, but, as a matter 
of fact, these moves had practically no effect on the 
college life. When the School of Mines was started, the 
two sets of students would at first have nothing to do 
with one another, but the influence of the vigorous men 
whom Egleston and Chandler were attracting from the 
country at large, before long made itself felt. 

In the late sixties student activities were still prac- 
tically centered in the life of the two literary societies 
and in the fraternities. There was still student disorder, 
some of it of an amusing kind. For example, in the 
prescribed chapel service the students by prearrange- 
ment would sing lustily the first line or two of a hymn 
and then stop suddenly, leaving the quavering voice of 
the old janitor, apparently the only member of the gov- 
ernment to share the privileges of chapel, to carry on the 
lines alone. There were vigorous rushes in and about 
the old building which John Kendrick Bangs later chris- 
tened the Maison de Punk. The resourceful Dr. Chand- 
ler is fond of telling how, on one wintry day, when he 
was temporarily in charge, a glorious rush in the " Pass 
of Thermopylae ' ' was brought to nothing through his in- 
considerate playing of the hose upon the combatants. 

Perhaps the pleasantest feature of college life in those 
days was the Semi-annual Exhibition, first held under 
the direction of the authorities, and, after the Civil War, 
arranged by the students themselves and held in the old 



188 STUDENTS AND STUDENT LIFE 

Academy of Music in Fourteenth Street. The exercises 
were probably not of a profound character, but all the 
pretty girls in town were there, and everyone had a 
good time. The proceedings were sometimes marred by 
the presence of persons under the influence of liquor, but 
the students assured the faculty that this was a failing 
exclusively limited to outsiders. 

A more vigorous student life began to develop about 
the middle of the seventies. The winning crew at Henley 
was probably both an evidence and a cause. In this 
period student journalism and student athletics flour- 
ished and class politics, usually abetted by the fine Italian 
hand of the fraternities, reached almost the point of 
bloodshed. The test of strength between the warring fac- 
tions was the award of the Goodwood Cup to the most 
popular junior, and this award had finally to be aban- 
doned after 1878 because of the bitterness it engen- 
dered. 

The present students' lounging room in Hamilton Hall, 
which was furnished by the class of '81 and named the 
Gemot, is a reminder of the original Gemot, organized in 
that class, with headquarters in a beer saloon opposite 
the College grounds. In the nineties the beer saloon was 
deserted for the more aristocratic Buckingham Hotel. 
Its barroom, in my time, attracted far too much of the 
attention of some of the students. One of the waiters 
there, finding his occupation in large part gone, followed 
the College when it moved uptown. He bought some 
materials from an old mansion that was being torn down 
and avoided rent by setting them up as a College Tavern 
upon what would have been One Hundred and Twenty- 
first Street had the street been cut through. In the 
early days at Morningside, when everything was new and 
bare, Mike's tavern furnished a cozy retreat, but there 



ATHLETIC SPORTS 189 

was too much drinking here also, far more than there 
is at present among the students, and it was a good 
thing when the city saw fit to recognize the trespass. 
The land has since been sanctified by the erection upon 
it of the Union Theological Seminary. 

The attitude of Columbia toward athletics has been 
sympathetic, but never, I think, idolatrous. King was 
the first president who interested himself in student 
sports. He tried without success to get the trustees to 
establish a student billiard room, but he did succeed 
in getting a teacher of boxing and fencing. In 1867 an 
appropriation of two hundred dollars was made for 
student athletics. The sum indeed was small, but it was 
the first made by a college from its corporate funds 
for this purpose. Since then other appropriations have 
been made, and individual trustees, notably W. G. 
Lathrop and F. S. Bangs, have labored hard in the 
interest of student sports, and so have many of the pro- 
fessors ; on the other hand, the tail has never been per- 
mitted to wag the dog. 

As one looks over the record of athletics at Columbia, 
the first thought is of the individual champions and 
heroes. All New York, from the mayor down, assembled 
to welcome Goodwin and his comrades upon their victo- 
rious return from Henley in 1878. Sayre of '81 helped 
mightily to bring the championship in track athletics 
to Columbia, and his eye is still so keen that he served 
as captain of the American pistol team at the Olympic 
games. The president of the College Alumni Associa- 
tion walks with a cane to-day as the result of an heroic 
physical sacrifice in the 'varsity boat twenty-five years 
ago. The Mapes brothers — Charles, Herbert, and Vic- 
tor — brought many championships to their Alma Mater, 



190 STUDENTS AND STUDENT LIFE 

and the beautiful iron gate on Broadway is a memorial 
to Herbert Mapes, who was drowned while trying to 
save a woman's life. Colonel Roosevelt has paid a fine 
tribute to one of his Rough Riders, shot in Cuba, Hamil- 
ton Fish, of the Class of '95, a University oarsman. A 
recent president of the Amateur Athletic Union, Gus- 
tavus T. Kirby, learned his devotion to athletics at 
Columbia. A little later come Weekes and Morley, 
idols of the football team, and the hero of to-day is Bab- 
cock, who won the world's championship in the pole 
vault at Stockholm. 

Rowing has always been the premier sport, and the 
happiest memories of many an alumnus are of the aft- 
ernoons on the Harlem or the Hudson, followed by days 
at New London or Poughkeepsie. The first class crew 
was apparently that of 1859, and the first regatta in 
1876. That year the race at the Centennial Celebration 
at Poughkeepsie was lost by the fainting of one of the 
men, a tragedy repeated, as all the world knows, at 
Poughkeepsie thirty-five years later. In the seventies 
Columbia was easily the foremost rowing college in 
America. The crew of '86 was also a famous one, but 
shortly afterward rowing was given up as an intercol- 
legiate sport, to be triumphantly revived by an inter- 
collegiate victory at Poughkeepsie in 1895. Since then, 
although there has been no victory there except that of 
the freshmen in 1911, there have been sterling crews 
and many a heartbreaking finish. 

Track athletics also have a fine background. For the 
ten years beginning in 1877, when the first intercollegiate 
championship was won, the blue and white were more 
likely to be at the front than any other colors. In more 
recent years, although there have been well-rounded 
teams, and much interest in the class and college con- 



ATHLETIC SPORTS 191 

tests, there has been a lack of the " stars " necessary 
for victory at the intercollegiates. 

Baseball has been played since the sixties, and of late 
years, like hockey and " soccer," it is steadily growing 
in interest, A sport which has had a conspicuous and 
persistent success at Columbia is basket-ball. The game 
was invented as recently as 1892 as an adjunct to regular 
gymnasium work, and the first Columbia teams were 
those of the girls of Barnard and Teachers College. A 
masculine 'varsity was first formed twelve years ago, 
since when six intercollegiate championships have come 
to Columbia. 

In the public mind, however, Columbia's most con- 
spicuous sport is conspicuous by its absence. The dis- 
cussion of intercollegiate football is sure to be a thank- 
less task to one who is both an alumnus and an officer, 
for most of the alumni, even those who appreciate the 
courage of the authorities for their stand in the face 
of what was almost a national idolatry, believe that the 
abolition of the game in 1905 was a serious mistake in 
the interest of the institution. On the other hand, the 
faculty, almost to a man, hold the opposite opinion. 
The game is the oldest Columbia sport, having been 
played as far back as 1834. After a lapse of some years 
it was taken up in 1899 under dubious auspices, and, in 
spite of indignant denials by credulous officers, it is 
unfortunately true that certain members of the early 
teams had no right to play as amateurs and collegians. 
This, however, was not the reason for its abolition. The 
members of later teams were all right as regards eligi- 
bility, even though most of them for their own sakes 
should not have been playing football. 

The abolition of the game did not represent the in- 
dividual caprice of President Butler, but was the result 



192 STUDENTS AND STUDENT LIFE 

of profound feeling on the part of almost everyone who 
was responsible for the educational work of the Uni- 
versity that football had become an academic nuisance. 
Elsewhere than in a complex metropolitan university, 
where the efficiency of the year's work depends largely 
upon getting under way promptly, the undoubted mer- 
its of the game may well outweigh its disadvantages. 
At Columbia, however, football developed not into a 
sport for college boys, but into a serious business for 
mature and often reluctant professional students who 
could ill afford the time for it. In its last year the only 
Columbia College student to win the football " C " was 
E. T. Collins, who has since joined the ranks of distin- 
guished alumni as a professional baseball player. 

Football, nevertheless, was a powerful factor in awak- 
ening the loyalty and enthusiasm of the alumni, and 
their disappointment is a reason for real regret. After 
a year or so of bitter feeling, the undergraduates them- 
selves accepted the situation with more philosophy than 
their elders. Class football was experimentally re- 
established in 1907, but it failed to get a foothold and 
has disappeared. In Professor Erskine's words: " Un- 
less they are made to play by artificial stimulus of one 
kind or another, undergraduates will not play this game, 
for it is no longer a sport and no longer amateur. The 
students are not mollycoddles, they are not going to the 
deuce, and they are not eager to furnish a gladiatorial 
combat for spirited alumni to bet on." 

Whether it is the spirit of individualism in which 
some rejoice, or whether it is easier with our 
somewhat limited undergraduate body to get together 
a small team, I do not know, but it is a fact that the 
record of the minor sports, so-called, is unusually good 
at Columbia. Intercollegiate championships have been 



MUSIC, DRAMA, DEBATING 193 

won, and often won more than once, in bicycle riding, 
shooting — and, by the way, the rifle match at Stockholm 
was won by a Columbia student — bowling, wrestling, 
chess, swimming and water polo, gymnastics, lawn 
tennis and fencing. 

Columbia has certainly not yet solved the problem of 
a general participation in athletic sports. Too many 
" carry on their morals what they ought to carry on 
their muscles." Still the signs for the future are hope- 
ful. Informal fraternity and class contests of various 
kinds are growing in number, and the physical educa- 
tion department conducts its prescribed courses in the 
open air whenever possible. That the problem of gen- 
eral undergraduate participation is not insoluble we 
know, for Oxford and Cambridge have solved it. To be 
sure, they enjoy the advantage of a more benign climate 
and of unlimited playing fields, but American ingenuity 
is not what it is supposed to be, if the difficulties here can- 
not be overcome. 

Of the multifarious other activities of the students, 
past and present, the limits of space forbid more than 
a very brief review. The class of 1869 had a quartet, 
the first evidence of the beginning of musical organiza- 
tions. A Glee Club was formed about ten years later, 
and since then the record has been probably neither 
better nor worse than at other colleges. The dramatic 
record is more picturesque. Beginning with the per- 
formance of the first original play, " Igala," in 1880, 
the Columbia plays, by Morrison and others, had great 
popularity and were the chief support of student ath- 
letics. Among the authors either of the words or the 
music of later plays have been Guy Wetmore Carryl, 
John Erskine, Henry Sydnor Harrison, and among the 



194 STUDENTS AND STUDENT LIFE 

performers, W. C. delMille, the dramatist. The 'Varsity 
Show of to-day is a most elaborate affair, admirably 
staged, with good dancing, startling costumes, and many 
good songs, but one wonders whether it is the right type 
for an institution of learning. Nevertheless, the boys 
who go into the shows have a very good time of it, 
particularly on the trips to Washington, Pittsburgh, and 
elsewhere, made under the auspices of the alumni clubs. 
More representative, though less elaborate, are the 
Elizabethan and Irish plays and those in French, Ger- 
man and Spanish, given by the literary societies, the plays 
at Barnard College, and particularly the work of the re- 
cently organized Columbia University Dramatic Associa- 
tion, which is open both to men and women, and has 
already given admirable performances. 

There was apparently a short-lived debating society 
in Hamilton's day. Of the organizations now at Colum- 
bia, the oldest is the Philolexian Society, founded in 1802. 
Four years later came the Peithologian. For many 
years these two represented about all there was of col- 
lege life. Such literary work as was done was dope 
for them rather than for the college, and their libraries, 
in contrast to the official one, were available for use. 
Altogether the little college would have been a dreary 
place for the student had it not been for them. It is 
pleasant to remember that the Columbia flag of blue and 
white combines the colors of the two societies. 

About 1842 a small Columbia group formed a society 
for improvement in letters which grew into a notable 
New York coterie known as " The Column." This was 
later merged into the Century Association, where the 
lamp upon the silver column is still lighted with due 
ceremony at every meeting. 



PUBLICATIONS 195 

In 1877, the Barnard Literary Association was founded 
as a protest against the control of the older societies by 
the fraternities, and when intercollegiate debating came 
into vogue it, with Philolexian, took charge of this activ- 
ity. In 1897 Columbia won a victory over the Harvard 
Forum, and soon afterward defeated the University of 
Chicago. For some years thereafter it was one of the 
strongest debating colleges of the day. After a brief de- 
cline in interest, debating is again to the fore, and in 1913 
Columbia won both contests in the triangular league with 
Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania. 

After some ephemeral efforts (the earliest, which dates 
from 1813, being in manuscript) Acta Columbiana was 
founded in 1873. After suffering from the undignified 
and slovenly writing in current college journalism I 
must confess to some relief in finding the student writing 
of forty years ago to be just as bad, the only difference 
being that it erred on the side of fine and florid writing 
rather than on the side of " journalese." This criti- 
cism, however, no longer holds true of the days, 1880-83, 
when Acta was being edited by Harry Thurston Peck, 
Nicholas Murray Butler, and John Kendrick Bangs. 
Writing of this period, W. A. Bradley, himself one of 
the chief figures in a later revival in student letters, says 
that " not only was it one of the best papers ever pub- 
lished at Columbia, but there has seldom been in any 
American college, we are confident, a publication that 
has had at once more intrinsic interest for the casual 
reader of back files to-day, and at the same time a flavor 
so thoroughly characteristic of the little college world 
which it represented. It was at once admired and hated 
by contemporary college periodicals, and was at one 
time removed from the exchange list of Yale papers. 
Outside of college circles it attained considerable notice, 



196 STUDENTS AND STUDENT LIFE 

and its really excellent verse, which was the work 
for the most part of Peck, Bangs, Frank Dempster 
Sherman, and William Ordway Partridge, was quoted 
widely. ' ' 

Shortly after this period Acta was crowded out by a 
more vigorous rival, Spectator, founded in 1878. In 
the nineties came the Literary Monthly, and the less 
serious Morningside, which for a brief period rivaled the 
Acta of the previous decade in brilliance. Bradley's 
" Imaginary Lectures " is one of the classics of under- 
graduate writing. A decade ago the Jester was born, 
an illustrated monthly which closely resembles the little 
girl with the frontal curl. Shortly afterward the Lit 
and Morningside combined forces, and the present 
Monthly is by far the most " advanced " publication 
of the entire University. It is admirably written, but 
much of the material must make the forbears of the 
youthful authors stir uneasily in their graves. All these 
activities left Spectator free to develop into a newspaper, 
and to-day it holds a relatively high place among student 
dailies. 

A college year-book, in the modem sense, was first 
published in 1864. This shows that at that date there 
were, besides four fraternities, two local secret societies, 
a chess club, and a billiard club, two literary societies, 
a Christian association, a chemical society, and a base- 
ball association, rather a sharp contrast to the innumer- 
able organizations of to-day. Like everj^thing else 
that Columbia undertook during the brilliant period 
between 78 and '84, the Colurnbiads were of high order. 
The present Columhian is a handsome volume of the 
conventional type, and a necessity to all interested in 
college life. Owing to the presence of an architectural 



STUDENT DIVERSITY 197 

school, the illustrations are somewhat better than the 
average. 

For those upon whose " unreceptive minds statistics 
fall like chilling pellets of fact ' ' the detailed statements 
as to student growth and registration are tucked away 
in an Appendix to this volume, where they may be neg- 
lected at will. To summarize these briefly, in 1913-14, 
almost exactly 10,000 students enrolled in Columbia 
University. (Sixty years ago there were but 172.) 
This figure includes the forty-five hundred students of 
the Summer Session, but does not include about four 
thousand in Extension Teaching and other irregular 
courses. About one-quarter of the students are under- 
graduates, an increase of seventy-five per cent, in ten 
years; another quarter are non-professional graduate 
students, an increase of one hundred and sixty-seven per 
cent, in the same period ; half are professional students, 
an increase of sixty-two per cent. More than half the 
students in the University Corporation have already 
received the first degree. Of these five hundred hold 
more than one degree, and one student, still here, has 
five! At Commencement, 1913, 1,656 degrees and 
diplomas were granted. The proportion of men to 
women is thirty-seven to twenty-three. 

The degrees already held by last year's students were 
conferred by 351 different institutions. Those that have 
sent the largest total of graduates to Columbia for pro- 
fessional and higher training are, in order, Yale, the 
New York City College, Princeton, Harvard, Amherst, 
Williams, Rutgers, New York University, and Cornell. 
Outside the United States, Toronto is in the lead. 

The tendency to enter the different departments of 
Columbia with advanced standing is noteworthy. It 



198 STUDENTS AND STUDENT LIFE 

has always been a feature of the student body in engi- 
neering and Teachers College, and is rapidly coming 
to be so in law and medicine. In fact, to-day the 
medical class is likely to graduate more men than it 
enters, in spite of the inevitable mortality in so severe a 
course. Columbia College also is coming to draw a very 
considerable portion of its membership from other col- 
leges. In 1891 there were ten students admitted to ad- 
vanced standing. Last year there were more than one 
hundred, coming from over fifty different institutions. 

The wide geographical distribution of students is 
shown in the Appendix. Even in Columbia College 
only one-third of the students were born on Manhattan 
Island, and four-fifths of the States of the Union and 
many foreign countries are represented in the registra- 
tion. Hardly more than three-quarters of the students 
come to the University from the North Atlantic division 
of States, and this proportion is steadilj' decreasing. 
The most rapidly-growing element is the South Atlantic 
division. As many students arrive from North Carolina 
alone as from all four of the more distant New England 
States. 

The foreign students form an interesting part of the 
community, and many of them take an active part in 
the student life. We have, for example, had a Zulu 
noble, who won the gold medal for public speaking. A 
Chinaman, now in high station at Pekin, was editor-in- 
chief of the college daily. There are to-day sixty or 
more Chinese students, and Turkish students are here in 
sufficient numbers to maintain an Ottoman Society. 

The social and economic distribution of the students 
is as striking as the geographical. A large proportion 
have to be self-supporting while in residence ; indeed, 
it is the opportunities for work which New York City 



SELF-GOVERNMENT 199 

offers that attract many of them to Columbia. A re- 
cent valedictorian was a Custom House inspector. 
Others were policemen, revenue cutter officers, " lectur- 
ers " on sightseeing motors, artists' models, organizers 
of after-school classes of the little children of the rich, 
civil service and election workers. 

Rough diamonds are an important factor in the attri- 
tion that should go on among students, and fortunately 
Columbia gets its share of them. There is no more 
important factor in a boy's collegiate education than 
the opportunity of rubbing up against boys and men of 
utterly different points of view. To serve its purpose, 
a college must be a real melting pot. The elements 
that make for intellectual friction and stimulus exist 
in any good college, but they exist in proportion to the 
breadth and depth of the human material there. The 
records of the Pulitzer scholarship committee, which 
studies carefully the home conditions of candidates, 
give an astounding picture of the economic position 
of some of the families that send boys — and desir- 
able boys — to college. At the other end of the line 
are students whose wealth offers an almost equally seri- 
ous handicap to satisfactory academic work. Few stu- 
dents drift to Columbia, and if they do they are soon 
cut loose to drift elsewhere. 

President Barnard constantly but vainly tried to im- 
press upon the students that self-government is a duty 
which they owe themselves as an element of character 
formation. Upon assuming the presidency, Mr. Low 
endeavored to foster the idea by creating an academic 
undergraduate senate, but the time was not yet ripe. 
Indeed, civil liberty is a slow growth in academic quar- 
ters as elsewhere. Now, however, student self-govern- 



200 STUDENTS AND STUDENT LIFE 

ment is an essential feature of the undergraduate life. 
All the detailed problems of student affairs are in the 
hands of the Student Board of Representatives, elected 
by the students themselves and responsible only to them. 
Election is recognized as a real honor, and members 
take their duties seriously and perform them intelli- 
gently. The board of 1912 took the admirable initiative 
of publishing its records, and these published records 
will doubtless supply the element of continuity of policy, 
the lack of which had hitherto been the most serious 
handicap to the usefulness of the board. 

There is very little student disorder. Trouble in the 
classroom is practically unknown. During the opening 
days there are three contests between the sophomores and 
the freshmen, closely supervised by the student board. 
There is, I fear, still a little individual hazing of fresh- 
men, but the student sentiment on the whole is healthy 
in this matter as it is in others, and conditions are 
certainly improving year by year. Practically the only 
causes of trouble now are two vestigeal survivals from 
earlier days, the Sophomore Smoker in the fall and the 
Sophomore Triumph in the spring, neither of which is 
likely to be creditable to the student body. Readers 
of the newspapers may remember the lurid accounts 
of the proceedings of certain triumphing sophomores 
in the spring of 1912. The University turned over the 
matter for settlement to the Student Board of Repre- 
sentatives, which, after careful examination, suited the 
punishment to the crime by forbidding the offending 
class to hold the traditional ball in its junior year. 

There is an admirable system of self-government 
at Barnard College and another at Teachers College. 
The dormitories for men and women, also, are practically 
self-governing. 



ALUIVINI AFFAIRS 201 

The responsibility for athletic conditions is definitely- 
placed upon a small group of alumni and undergradu- 
ates, with a paid director. A non-athletic organization, 
similar in character, has just been organized. In these 
matters the university administration concerns itself 
only in a general financial oversight through a controller 
of student organizations, to whom budgets must be sub- 
mitted in advance, and with questions of academic 
eligibility, the approval of schedules, etc., which are in 
the hands of a small faculty committee. 

Class organization, which began half a century ago, 
is maintained under difiSculties to-day. Students enter 
both in September and February, many of them as 
sophomores and juniors, and the seniors are largely split 
up among the professional schools. The students do 
their best, however, and the freshmen, at any rate, are 
bound together by a realization of their lowly estate. 

As early as 1816 a society of graduates existed " for 
the purpose of reading papers on literary and scientific 
subjects." The interest of the alumni was heightened 
by the semi-centennial celebration in the year 1837, and 
the present association was organized in 1856, among the 
most active in the movement being Abram S. Hewitt, 
'42. Since 1860 this Association of the Alumni of 
Columbia College has held regular meetings. It is more 
than a coincidence that 1860 was the year in which Pro- 
fessor Van Amringe graduated from the College, as 
since that time the association has been an object of his 
particular solicitude. It now numbers 1,412 and is in 
healthy condition. Three or four meetings are held each 
year, some of them, when the members feel that the 
University is not giving due attention to the College, 
being of a vigorous and exciting nature. 



202 STUDENTS AND STUDENT LIFE 

Every other part of the University has its alumni 
association. The Law School Association was revived 
in 1903 after a long sleep. That of the Physicians and 
Surgeons has an unbroken existence of more than fifty 
years, and that of the College of Pharmacy of more 
than forty. The Alumna? Association of Barnard, 
founded by the fifteen graduates of 1893 and 1894, 
proved its energy by undertaking the management of 
a temporary dormitory for Barnard girls, which paved 
the way for Brooks Hall. The Barnard alumna? are 
entrusted with the selection of one member of the Board 
of Trustees. 

The alumni of all the professional schools are con- 
stantly on the watch lest the departments in which they 
are interested should fall into a rut. In 1885, for ex- 
ample, a committee of the alumni of the School of 
Mines made a careful study of the operations of the 
school and offered valuable suggestions. The loy- 
alty of these schools is reflected in its strong 
alumni organization, which has 1,200 members, and 
does a great deal in helping the young graduates 
toward professional advancement. The Law School As- 
sociation also finds places for its graduates and inter- 
ests itself in the building up of the Law Library. The 
Medical Association maintains research fellowships and 
helps to keep up scientific equipment. This association 
and that of Teachers College make sure of at least one 
large gathering of their members a year by calling meet- 
ings, one at the time and place of the American Medical 
Association, and the other of the Department of Super- 
intendence of the National Education Association. 

For many years the alumni of certain cities have 
had some form of organization, notably in Chicago, Pitts- 
burgh, Denver, and Washington, and during Professor 



ALIBINI AFFAIRS 203 

Tombo's vigorous secretaryship of the Alumni Council 
the number of out-of-town associations was greatly in- 
creased. The total number of separate organizations, 
school and regional, which have something more than a 
nominal existence, is now about twenty-five, and includes 
clubs in Japan, China, and Mexico. 

Organized alumni interest in the institution as a whole 
did not come until the organization in 1895 of a Uni- 
versity Council, representative originally of the College, 
Mines, and Medical Associations only, and later of other 
associations. Since 1908 the Alumni Council has main- 
tained an office in the University, which is busy from 
morning until night. It conducts the Alumni News, has 
charge of the machinery for the election of alumni trus- 
tees, and of the alumni doings on Alumni Day and Com- 
mencement, 

Although comparatively late in the organization of 
its alumni and, so to speak, in the capitalization of the 
alumni loyalty already existing, the question of direct 
alumni representation in our governing body was pro- 
posed more than a decade before arrangements were 
made at Harvard for the representation of alumni 
through the Board of Overseers, only to be rejected by 
the trustees. It was not until 1908 that the trustees 
announced that, as vacancies occurred, they would elect 
six members of the board upon nomination by the or- 
ganized alumni of the University. It is not necessary 
to give a detailed statement of the necessarily compli- 
cated means of selecting trustees, beyond saying that 
the nominations are made by a sort of electoral college 
consisting of delegates of all alumni associations with 
twenty-five or more members, each association being 
given as many votes as it has graduates in good standing 
on its rolls. The man so elected serves for a term of 



204 STUDENTS AND STUDENT LIFE 

six years and is not immediately eligible for re-election. 
Tfie associations and the electors enter into their work 
with real seriousness of spirit, and the weight of their 
views is shown in that more than once the trustees 
have themselves chosen alumni who, although they had 
failed of formal nomination, were evidently held in high 
esteem by the electors. 

In all alumni enterprises, here and elsewhere, certain 
alumni are perhaps more interested in getting prestige 
for themselves than in serving their Alma INIater, but as 
a whole, and particularly when one considers how recent 
is any sense of solidarity, Columbia has reason to be 
proud and appreciative of the loyalty and interest of 
her alumni. 

Perhaps too much of the energy of the Alumni Coun- 
cil has been devoted to the details of its machinery. Still 
the council has already solved admirably certain of the 
complicated problems inherent in the alumni situation at 
Columbia, and the others will doubtless be met more and 
more effectually as time goes on. At present the coun- 
cil includes only the schools of the corporation, leaving 
the associations of Barnard College, Teachers College, 
and Pharmacy without direct representation in general 
alumni matters, but a plan for organizing a general 
Alumni Federation, which all men graduates of the Uni- 
versity may join, has just been adopted. Its executive 
committee is to take over the present functions of the 
council. No provision is, however, in contemplation 
for woman suffrage, a fact to which attention is sure 
to be called in vigorous terms before very long. 

In the earlier days the spirit of class organization 
after graduation was rather haphazard, although 1874 
has dined together at least once each year since they 
were freshmen. Since 1880 practically every class in 



ALUMNI AFFAIRS 205 

arts and science, and not a few in law and medicine, 
has maintained an organization, the graduates in the 
two former sometimes uniting in a joint association. 
The special celebrations after ten and twenty years do 
much to reawaken the class spirit of the members. 

In 1901 a Columbia University Club was organized. 
It now owns a comfortable old-fashioned club building 
on Gramercy Park, and has 1,307 members. The build- 
ing is much used, especially by the younger alumni, 
and in the winter there are admirable monthly club 
dinners. One of the most comfortable places to dine 
in New York during the summer is its open-air dining- 
room. The club maintains a friendly rivalry with simi- 
lar organizations in squash and other games, and at the 
June regatta its corporate being moves into a well- 
stocked special car and is transported to Poughkeepsie. 

The extraordinary organization known as the Early 
Eighties, mentioned elsewhere, was organized at Com- 
mencement in 1907, and has pointed the way for similar 
groupings of the Older Graduates and the Upper 
Eighties, and more recently the Forty-Niners (the last 
five classes at the Forty-ninth Street site). A large 
number of alumni whose offices are in the lower part of 
the city make a practice of lunching together at the 
Lawyers Club every Monday. 




VII 

AN ACADEMIC YEAR 

Tlie Summer Sesaion. Preparations for Autumn. Opening Days. 
The Year's Routine. The Budget. Winter and Spring. Com- 
mencement. Other Pageants. The Home Stretch. 

Columbia University is largely run by calendar. 
The academic calendar, which is prepared each year for 
the formal approval of the University Council, settles the 
various important milestones of the year, and each of 
the larger executive offices has its own calendar of the 
things for which it is responsible. This fact has sug- 
gested the idea of setting down, more or less in chron- 
ological order, some of the significant happenings of an 
academic year in order to show by a series of concrete 
examples something of what the Scotchman in the story 
called the worrking of the worrks. 

Our year begins on July 1, which is a far busier day 
than one who has no idea of a modern university can 
realize. All the administrative officers are luxuriating in 
a sense of new-found wealth. They have been living on 
short commons for the last month or so, but the new 
appropriations are now available. The bursar is bal- 
ancing the books for the year just closed and everj'one 
else, particularly tlie director and the registrar, are 
preparing for the imminent onrush of Summer Session 
students. For this occasion the registrar commandeers 
the gj'mnasium and builds a complicated series of run- 
ways, whereby the new student, once correctly launched, 
is led inevitably to correct registration. By this method 

206 



SUMMER SESSION 207 

more than fourteen hundred students are enrolled in 
a single day without confusion or delay. 

Both teachers and students of the forthcoming ses- 
sion are looking up abiding-places, renewing old ac- 
quaintanceships, and making new ones. A summer ses- 
sion faculty constitutes an intercollegiate society of great 
value and stimulus, and associations of this sort, as Pro- 
fessor Baldwin has pointed out, are worth far more than 
the crowded meetings of learned societies for three days 
in the winter; for it has wider scope and lasts for six 
weeks. The exchange of ideas at the Columbia Summer 
Session, where the faculty numbers some two hundred 
and fifty, may fairly be assumed to be worth something 
to the education of the country. 

Before one realizes it the session itself is upon us, 
and some five thousand people plunge at once as if by 
some miracle into vigorous and complicated activity. 
To say nothing of the formal work in the 435 courses 
of instruction, each of which is conducted daily, there 
are religious meetings, music and drama, excursions 
seemingly to everything of interest within range of the 
city, organization and meetings of all sorts of student 
societies, State and other. I have before me the Bulletin 
of a single week. It includes thirty different meetings 
and other enterprises, including excursions to the New 
York Stock Exchange, to a newspaper office, to the 
latest transatlantic leviathan, to West Point and the 
Navy Yard, addresses by President Butler and others, 
lectures and dramatic readings, special chapel services, 
and open-air concerts. 

Besides the students at work in New York, there are 
three hundred at the summer camp in engineering 
and others in mines, factories, law offices, and dispen- 
saries. The old idea of a college vacation of four months 



208 AN ACADEMIC YEAK 

lias passed into history. In August come open-air plays, 
for which the University Green is admirably adapted. 
Then the choral singers present the oratorio they have 
been rehearsing. The baseball teams from the various 
sections of the country decide the championship. At 
the latest possible moment comes consistent devotion to 
the library to prepare for the impending examinations, 
and these once over the place is deserted as suddenly and 
as miraculously as it was filled. 

During all this time the admissions oflBcers have been 
busy with the interests of the fall crop of undergradu- 
ates. The deans have been preparing their annual re- 
ports and the executive officers setting their houses in 
order for the new year 's work. 

From the middle of August to the first of September 
is the quietest time of the year. It is used by the super- 
intendent to give his buildings a thorough scrubbing, 
and by not a few scholars of our own and other facul- 
ties to do a quiet piece of uninterrupted research. After 
Labor Day the world begins to come back. Plans have 
to be made for the fall entrance examinations and for 
what are known as the " lame duck " examinations for 
old students. Men whose return depends upon some re- 
munerative work are besieging the employment office, 
others are settling in the dormitories or in nearby board- 
ing houses, patrols from the different fraternities are 
scouting about to look over promising new material. 
City boys back from their vacations are using the base- 
ball field and tennis courts, and altogether the experi- 
enced eye realizes that the real rush will soon be on. 
Day by day more professors return to lead telegamic 
existences until their families return. 

By the third week of September the dormitories are 




Q 
< 

z 



PREPARATIONS FOR AUTUMN 209 

well filled with men and women from all over the world 
— and the day when only three students in the entire 
institution lived north of Nineteenth Street in New York 
is within the memory of one of the trustees. Practically 
all of the teachers are at their desks and the general 
offices are overwhelmed with newcomers engaged in 
self-orientation. The new year actually begins on the 
last Wednesday of September, with exercises which over- 
flow the Gymnasium. An address is made by one of the 
professors. Since it is purely a family party, he is 
not unlikely to poke fun at his colleagues; those, for 
example, " who mistake a part of archaeology for the 
whole of education " were recently held up to derision. 
The visiting foreign professors usually make their bow 
on this occasion. 

On the same day the juniors herd together the fresh- 
men, to meet the already organized sophomores for the 
first of three contests held under the eye of the Student 
Board of Representatives and designed to infuse class 
spirit into the youngsters. Often these contests seem 
rather perfunctory, but sometimes they are amusing to 
watch. The losers in the tug-of-war, for example, are 
exposed to involuntary baptism from a hose played by 
the referee across the original center of the line. Sus- 
ceptible freshmen are inveigled into purchasing reserved 
seats in the Chapel or are sent to the dean's office for 
their gymnasium towels, and after dark ambitious mem- 
bers of the two lower classes spend laborious hours in 
painting their numerals upon the fences, only to find 
that a janitor is detailed at this time of year to paint 
out these demonstrations just before dawn. 

Lectures begin promptly on the following day, and 
before the week is out everything is running as smoothly 
as if there had been no interruption. The new students, 



210 AN ACADEMIC YEAR 

and there are some two thousand of them to he assimi- 
lated each year, are under the special eye of their deans 
and advisers and of the men at the student building, 
Earl Hall. Receptions are held to bring the large num- 
ber of men entering the upper classes into touch with 
one another and with representative students, and the 
various managers are dashing about among all the new- 
comers looking for promising recruits, while Spectator 
is daily urging them to deeds of devotion. The Ex- 
tension classes are organized a week or so later, and 
the initial meeting of the Institute is held. In the mean- 
time the several academic committees are getting or- 
ganized for the winter and the first of the monthly meet- 
ings of the trustees and the faculties are held in the 
Trustees' Room. The new members of the staff and their 
families are being taken into the academic fold at an 
autumn reception and through the good offices of their 
departmental seniors. 

Services are held daily in St. Paul's Chapel, which 
has an excellent student choir. An interesting feature 
of every religious service held in the Chapel is the read- 
ing of a prayer composed by the first President, Samuel 
Johnson : 

" May God Almighty grant that this College, hap- 
pily founded, may ever be enriched with His blessing; 
that it may increase and flourish, and be carried on 
to its entire perfection, to the glory of His name, and 
the adornment of His true religion and sound learning, 
and to the greatest advantage of the public weal, to 
all posterities forevermore. " 

At Earl Hall, Bible study clubs are organized and op- 
portunities for settlement and other social work made 
for the large number of men and women who volunteer 
for this purpose. One hundred and fifty men and 



OPENING DAYS 211 

women dined together there this year and discussed 
plans for the future. The foreign students are gathered 
for Sunday evening suppers in the home of the Cosmo- 
politan Club. 

An interesting sight on these autumn days is the 
conduct of the prescribed classes in physical education 
in the open air on the South Field. Each new under- 
classman, by the way, receives a careful physical exami- 
nation, at which heart and eye troubles are often brought 
to light for the first time. Two years later each stu- 
dent receives another set of measurements; in many 
cases the development under intelligent and expert guid- 
ance is remarkable. This oversight, and the availability 
of the University Physician, who had five thousand visits 
last year, do their share in maintaining a strikingly low 
average of absence from academic work through illness. 

In October comes the first of the four meetings of the 
University Council, at which questions affecting the Uni- 
versity as a whole receive consideration. 

The students have by this time settled down into their 
ordinary routine and the atmosphere of steady, rapid 
work, which is a real characteristic of Columbia, is made 
manifest. Except for the relatively small proportion 
of idlers, the question in each student's mind is evi- 
dently not how little but how much he can get out 
of his intellectual opportunity. Jack, however, has no 
intention of being made a dull boy by an entire absence 
of play. The dormitories have begun to organize their 
informal hops, and their particular organ, the Dorms, 
appears on Sunday mornings. The existence of the 
fraternities is brought forcibly to the attention of the 
authorities by letters of protest from dwellers in the 
neighborhood as to the enthusiastic and protracted na- 



212 AN ACADEMIC YEAR 

ture of their initiation ceremonies. The students of 
architecture are also prone to make night hideous to eye 
and ear by costume parades to mark the close of a period 
of industry en charette. 

The basket-ball games and subsequent dances begin 
to attract their thousands to the gymnasium, and other 
athletic and musical activities are getting under way. 
The undergraduate papers are adopting their annual 
tone of condescending pity toward one another and the 
managers of all student activities are scurrying in eager 
quest for material, human and financial. The editors of 
the university annual, the Columhian, are busily collect- 
ing the multitudinous details which are to go into that 
handsome and useful publication. Very little of their 
time, it may be said in passing, seems to be devoted to 
proof reading. 

In the undergraduate colleges the first round-up for 
the year is being made, and from the dean's office go 
out messages of congratulation, warning, probation, and 
even of farewell. The graduate students are setting the 
stage for their researches and the men in the profes- 
sional schools settling into their stride. 

At this time also comes the first meeting of the Col- 
lege Forum, where undergraduate teachers and students, 
on a basis of absolute equality and with delightful frank- 
ness and good nature on both sides, debate upon matters 
affecting the undergraduate life. For this year the 
question of primary interest is the transferring of re- 
sponsibility for honesty in examinations from the Uni- 
versity authorities to the students themselves. 

By November, the public lectures and addresses given 
under the Institute or otherwise are in full swing. It 
is not unusual to have as many as eighteen of these ad- 
dresses in a single week. To say nothing of the 



THE YEAR'S ROUTINE 213 

local supply of celebrities, nearly all persons of im- 
portance sooner or later come to New York, and stu- 
dents and citizens nearly always have an opportunity to 
hear them at the University — an opportunity which the 
males among the former too frequently neglect. There 
is a story of a visiting bishop who was invited by a 
student club to address its members, and who when he 
went to the appointed place found not a single soul; 
even the man who had personally tendered the invita- 
tion had found something he preferred to do elsewhere. 
At times, of course, the whole community decides sim- 
ultaneously that it wants to hear some particular man — 
"William James, for instance, or Henri Bergson. On 
such occasions the scene at the doors of our inadequate 
lecture halls takes on the aspect of a riot. 

Before Thanksgiving comes the first of the impressive 
general University services held in the Chapel. The 
professors, instead of getting a brief holiday at this sea- 
son, usually betake themselves to the meetings of some 
academic society at Columbia or elsewhere. 

In December the student teas and faculty receptions 
begin. The freshmen and sophomores fight it out by 
proxy in a series of cane sprees, a sort of combination 
of wrestling and single stick. The sophomores also have 
their annual play, whose chief function seems to be to 
call attention by contrast to the really excellent per- 
formance of the University Dramatic Association, also 
held about this time. On Christmas night the men re- 
maining in the dormitories light the yule log with 
becoming pomp and circumstance. This is one of the 
shows of the year and the reception hall of Hartley is 
packed with students and alumni. It is interesting to 
remember, by the way, that two of the best known Ameri- 
can contributions to the literature of Christmas are from 



214 AN ACADEMIC YEAR 

the pens of Columbia men. " 'Twas the Night Before 
Christmas " was written by Clement C. Moore of the 
class of 1798, son of President Benjamin Moore, and the 
famous editorial letter answering a little girl's inquiry 
as to the existence of Santa Claus, which appeared first 
in the New York Suti in 1897, was written by Francis P. 
Church of the class of 1859, In Hartley also the 
members of the department of music, from time to time, 
discourse sweet music on Sunday evenings in a delight- 
fully informal manner. 

Except for the last two weeks in August, the Christ- 
mas holidays are the deadest time of the year, aca- 
demically speaking. The professors are many of them 
at meetings of learned societies or in concealment catch- 
ing up arrears. The only active students are those on 
the Chess Team, who are usually engaged in winning the 
intercollegiate championship. 

The absorbing interest in December, for the staff, is 
the Budget. The students, of course, know nothing about 
the worries of their teachers at this time. Indeed, it 
is extraordinary how little the average undergraduate 
knows about such matters. My own student days fell 
during the intensely interesting period from 1894 to 
1898, and as I look back I blush to think how little I 
knew or cared about what was going on all about me. 
To come back to the budget, which for the sake of clear- 
ness it may be well to follow through its various stages. 
All through November the departments are busy with 
estimates of their probable expenses for the year begin- 
ning on the first of the following July, and as these 
expenses involve questions of promotion and other in- 
creases of salary, new appointments and provisions for 
research, it is a very interesting time for all concerned, 



THE BUDGET 215 

and the president has so many visitors that he has hardly 
time to eat his meals. These estimates are finally fin- 
ished and are sent by the departments through the 
president, and with his recommendations as to each item, 
to the committee on education of the trustees. Here 
they are checked by another set of recommendations, 
made by the deans on behalf of their respective facul- 
ties. This committee literally devotes days to study, 
and, as the sum-total of the various recommendations 
invariably far exceeds the ability of the trustees to 
provide funds, its work is necessarily a thankless one. 
The report of the committee is laid before the trustees 
in printed form on the first Monday in January, and 
is referred to the committee on finance, by which it 
is examined, not from the standpoint of the items, but 
from the standpoint of the capacity of the corporation 
to meet the total which it is proposed to spend. This 
second committee submits its report to the trustees 
at the February meeting, and the budget, with the rec- 
ommendations of the two committees, is made a special 
order for the first Monday in March. When it is re- 
membered that the budgets of the four corporations of 
the University represent a total of something more than 
three millions of dollars, it can be seen that a rather 
elaborate system is necessary, both to insure careful 
consideration and at the same time to see that decisions 
are reached early enough to permit the departments to 
make their spring announcements and when necessary 
to provide for new positions. 

The annual meeting of the Faculty Club comes in 
January, when men who have dared to criticise the 
administration are elected to the house committee as 
a suitable punishment. Among the students, the de- 



216 AN ACADEMIC YEAR 

baters and other public speakers are aroused to action. 
Besides speaking themselves, the men interested in this 
side of undergraduate life conduct public-speaking con- 
tests for schoolboys. Later on the youngsters are en- 
ticed to the University, for proselyting purposes, 
by receptions and athletic contests. Swimming and 
hockey are to the fore and the crew squad is getting 
under way. The mid-year examinations, how^ever, are 
drawing nearer every day and there is standing room 
only in the library. These examinations are held in the 
gymnasium and are closely proctored, a system rather 
irritating to many of the students, but effective in elimi- 
nating " cribbing." 

At the beginning of the second term a new set of 
undergraduates has to be assimilated into the system, 
for the College admits nearly one hundred boys at this 
time. Shortly afterwards comes Junior Week, which 
has been built about the original junior ball that has 
come dow^n from older days. This week is as close an 
imitation of the conventional performance at other col- 
leges as the socially minded members of the class can 
succeed in making it, and they succeed better than some 
of their teachers, whose work is neglected, would like. 

Lincoln's Birthday has, since 1908, been set apart as 
Alumni Day. This is a thoroughly characteristic Colum- 
bia occasion and attracts great numbers of former stu- 
dents to the University. In the morning classes are 
visited, and the afternoon proceedings begin with a seri- 
ous meeting, at which matters of general alumni interest 
are discussed. Then there are various informal proceed- 
ings, the dominating spirits being the Early Eighties, 
that inimitable organization of the graduates of 1880- 
1884. The Early Eighties liave all drunk deep at the 
fountain of perpetual youth and can be counted upon 



WINTER AND SPRING 217 

to appear in force upon any pretext, always accom- 
panied by a band of three performers in Continental 
uniform. Their example has resulted in similar class 
groupings, but none of these have as yet succeeded in 
rivaling the original model. Later in the afternoon, 
everyone goes to the gymnasium to see the representa- 
tives of the younger alumni classes offer " stunts " in 
competition for prizes. Some of the stunts are really 
very amusing, others might seem a little tedious to a 
crowd less firmly determined to be entertained. Then 
there is a Jeffersonian beefsteak dinner in the com- 
mons, with speech-making tabooed, and the proceedings 
terminate by attendance upon one of the championship 
basket-ball games in the gymnasium. At Teachers Col- 
lege a series of important educational conferences are 
held about this time, at which more than one thousand 
of the alumni are present. 

During the spring the departments are busy with ar- 
rangements for the new year and the professors in the 
graduate school are overwhelmed with the reading of 
doctoral dissertations, a necessary but not always an 
enlivening task; the undergraduates get a chance at 
the dean's house to talk over their futures with repre- 
sentatives of various callings, and the different profes- 
sional and semi-social, semi-scholarly societies hold most 
of their meetings. These meetings are an important 
factor in the student life. 

The elaborate 'Varsity Show comes off after a series 
of time-consuming but doubtless enjoyable rehearsals. 
The French and German societies give their plays. Vo- 
cal and instrumental concerts of varying degrees of merit 
are presented — the most interesting being an open-air 
inter-class song contest, held in the beautiful setting of 
the great court in front of the Library. 



218 AN ACADEMIC YEAR 

Some two hundred delegates from colleges all over 
the country come to Columbia at about this time to 
attend the meeting of the Intercollegiate Civic League. 
This meeting is followed by a trip to Washington, where 
the delegates are received by the President of the United 
States. At about this time also comes in presidential 
years the mock political convention. The whole col- 
lege is organized into a nominating convention. There 
are speeches from all the States and the whole place 
buzzes with oratory and committee meetings and booms 
of various sizes. The students have a glorious tim^, 
and w^hen it is all over they have acquired a grasp of 
the machinery of national politics that will last through- 
out their lives. Not long afterwards the students have 
their own politics to attend to in the elections to the 
Student Board of Representatives and to class offices 
for the ensuing year. 

The best of the seniors in the professional schools 
are choosing among the various invitations for positions 
after graduation ; for a man who has made his mark 
in a good professional school is nowadays a much-sought- 
after individual. The other more serious students are 
busy with fellowship and prize contests, and Avery Hall 
is lighted till long past midnight for the students com- 
peting for the intercollegiate contests in architectural 
design. In general, however, there is a lightening of 
the strain during the early warm days. It seems a good 
deal more natural, even for a professor, to stop to watch 
the baseball or track practice or a tennis match than to 
go on to the Library as one had intended. The aban- 
doned ones even take a day off to see the crew row at 
Princeton. 

Toward the first of May the advisers are besieged 
by students (who, in most cases, have until tlien left 



WINTER AND SPRING 219 

them severely alone) for help in working out schedules 
for the coming year. 

The Sophomore Triumph is one of the social phe- 
nomena of springtime. It harks back to a ceremony 
established by the Class of 1866 and known for many 
years as the ** burial of the Ancient " — Ancient Geog- 
raphy being the most detested part of the sophomore 
curriculum. It may be noted in passing that the chair- 
man of the 1882 Triumph committee is now the Presi- 
dent of the University. Of late years the Triumph, 
which is now over history and mathematics, had degen- 
erated into rather a discreditable affair, but last year's 
celebration showed promise of a return to the old tradi- 
tion. Another characteristic springtime festival is the 
Greek Games, held at Barnard College. If, by the way, 
I have given but little space to the student enterprises 
of Barnard and Teachers College, it does not mean that 
they are not both many and picturesque, but is due to 
the fact that the mere male in our community has but 
little opportunity to learn of them at first-hand. 

Besides the regular " finals," a repetition of the 
February ordeal, oral examinations are held for candi- 
dates for the doctor's degree and for an honors de- 
gree in the College, the latter, with the elan vital of 
youth on their side, occasionally making a better showing 
than their more learned seniors. 

The preparations for Commencement have long since 
been under way. The president, for example, who has 
to sign fifteen hundred and more diplomas, has been do- 
ing a few at a time ever since Christmas. From now on 
these preparations, however, become apparent. Bushes 
are trimmed and quick-growing oats sowed to conceal 
student shortcuts. The lame ducks are making one final 



220 AN ACADEMIC YEAR 

effort to soften the hearts of obdurate deans and com- 
mittees. For a dozen years or so the seniors have, in a 
baseball game, had their final chance to get the better 
of the faculty and have succeeded in doing it in less than 
half the cases. They are more successful in chess, in 
which field of activity the faculty enthusiasts are regu- 
larly trounced. 

Since Jime of 1865, Class Day has been held sepa- 
rately from Commencement. Its features are good, but 
rather in the conventional mold, the most striking con- 
tribution being usually the class poem. " Stand Colum- 
bia," the university hymn, was first read as a class 
poem. Barnard has its own Class Day, and Teachers 
College an excursion on the Hudson and a lawn party. 
On the day before Commencement comes the Phi Beta 
Kappa address, always well worth hearing. President 
Lowell's first public announcement of policy after his 
election as president of Harvard University was made 
at a Phi Beta Kappa address at Columbia. 

During the last few days the registrar's and secre- 
tary's offices have been working night and day, and 
absent-minded professors who have forgotten to send in 
the marks of candidates for graduation are bombarded 
by telegrams. 

Before describing a Columbia Commencement as it 
is to-day, it may be interesting to look back over the 
history of the ceremony. The first Commencement was 
held on June 21, 1758, and was conducted, as the news- 
paper reports of the day record, with elegance and pro- 
priety. Seven degrees were granted. The ceremony was 
held at St. George's Chapel, and from then on various 
buildings in the city were used. It was not until ^Ir. 
Low's time that all parts of the University had Com- 
mencement together, and not until the opening of the 



COMMENCEMENT 221 

new site that the exercises was held at the University, 
The Commencement of 1779 was honored by the presence 
of George Washington. At the first Commencement of 
Cohimbia College, 1786, the Weekly Gazette records the 
fact that '' the Continental Congress and both Houses 
of the Legislature suspended the public business to sup- 
port the important interests of education by their 
countenance and graced the ceremony by their august 
presence. ' ' 

The Commencement of 1811, held in Trinity Church, 
comes down to us as the Riotous Commencement. A 
student on that occasion was refused his diploma be- 
cause he declined to amend the language of his oration 
as directed by the faculty. He appealed to the audi- 
ence and certain young alumni took his part. The dis- 
order was so great that several of the participants were 
arrested and tried before Mayor DeWitt Clinton. This 
affair affected New York politics for many years. In 
the fifties again the Commencements were apparently 
rather disorderly. The regulations of the trustees per- 
mitting mild and decorous applause make it appear, at 
any rate, that applause was not always of this char- 
acter. Indeed, older graduates tell me that the differ- 
ent fraternities used to organize violent claques to greet 
their members when they appeared on the platform. 
Since Mr. Low 's time the students have been seen but not 
heard. Until the last decade of the nineteenth century 
the proceedings never seemed to have been of any par- 
ticular academic importance. 

The Commencement of 1894 was made notable by 
the presentation to Professor Drisler, retiring after a 
half century of service, of a gold medal struck in his 
honor, and that of 1910 was signalized by an extraor- 
dinary tribute to the retiring dean, Professor Van 



222 AN ACADEMIC YEAR 

Amringe, who, like Drisler, had rounded out a half 
century of notable service to the College. 

To-day, Commencement is perhaps most notable for 
the effectiveness and punctuality with which everything 
goes off, and this is due to the fact that everything has 
carefully been thought out beforehand. Indeed, the 
committee in charge is supposed to have special influ- 
ence even upon the weather, because there has been but 
one rainy day since the exercises have been held at 
the University. The amount of detailed planning and 
care necessary to bring the exercises to a close within 
the allotted period of an hour and a half can be 
appreciated when one remembers that more than sixteen 
hundred degrees and diplomas are granted. As an exam- 
ple of how rapid the recent growth of the University has 
been, it may be mentioned in passing that this number has 
doubled within the short space of half a dozen years. 
Every detail in the proceedings is checked by a stop- 
watch in the hands of one of the members of the com- 
mittee so that any unnecessary waste of time may be 
eliminated in the future. 

The first Commencement held upon the grounds of the 
University was in 1898. It was then expected that the 
gymnasium would be used for only a year or so for 
this purpose. It is still in use, however, and, consider- 
ing that it was designed for a wholly different purpose, 
it makes an excellent assembly hall. The candidates 
themselves, however, now more than half fill it, so that 
it is quite impossible for every graduate to have even 
his father and mother present to witness his receipt 
of the degree. 

An interesting recent experiment, which promises well 
for the future, is a general reception and garden party 
on the night before Commencement, with president and 



COMMENCEMENT 223 

deans on a receiving line and a band out of doors. This 
gives everyone a pleasant evening and serves to relieve 
the bitterness on the part of those who, owing to the 
lack of space at the formal commencement exercises, fail 
to receive tickets therefor. 

The proceedings, which since 1901 have been wholly 
in English, are conducted in a dignified and impressive 
manner, there being none of the " ragging " which oc- 
curs at an encaenia at Oxford. The trustees, faculties, 
and candidates assemble in the Library building and 
march in procession through the grounds to the Gym- 
nasium, already crowded beyond its capacity with par- 
ents and friends, where the formal proceedings begin lit- 
erally on the tick of the clock. The president makes a 
brief address to those about to receive degrees, in which 
he gives them some very useful advice, which it is to 
be hoped they follow in after years. This is the first 
of some dozen addresses which he must needs deliver on 
this one day. After this the candidates for each degree 
are formally presented by their respective deans and 
their degrees are conferred en hloc by the president. 
Perhaps the most impressive part of this proceeding has 
been the administration by the late Professor John G. 
Curtis to the candidates for a degree in medicine of the 
Hippocratic Oath. It is hard to see who can be found 
to take his place ; in any case his own eloquent transla- 
tion of the oath is certain to be used: 

Candidates for the degree of doctor of medicine — 

You do solemnly swear, each man by whatever he 
holds most sacred : 

That you will be loyal to the profession of medicine 
and just and generous to its members; 

That you will lead your lives and practice your art 
in uprightness and honor; 



224 AN ACADEMIC YEAR 

That into whatsoever house you shall enter, it shall 
be for the good of the sick to the utmost of your power, 
you holding yourselves far aloof from wrong, from cor- 
ruption, from the tempting of others to vice ; 

That you will exercise your art solely for the cure 
of your patients, and will give no drug, perform no 
operation, for a criminal purpose, even if solicited; far 
less suggest it; 

That whatsoever you shall see or hear of the lives 
of men which is not fitting to be spoken, you will keep 
inviolably secret. 

These things do you swear? Let each man bow the 
head in sign of acquiescence. 

And now, if you shall be true to this, your oath, may 
prosperity and good repute be yours; the opposite, if 
you shall prove yourselves forsworn. 

The candidates for honorary degrees, usually seven or 
eight in number, are then presented to the president 
by the University orator, and each degree is conferred 
with a summary of the qualifications of the recipient, 
as eloquent as it is terse. 

After the formal exercises there are always several 
alumni gifts to be offered and accepted. Then comes the 
Alumni Luncheon, seven hundred or more men crowd- 
ing into a room in which four hundred can be hardly 
accommodated with comfort. Some day a jostled mil- 
lionaire alumnus may give us a suitable building on the 
spur of the moment. This luncheon is the occasion for 
wild cheering of everybody and everything. The re- 
cipients of honorary degrees make brief addresses (at 
least, they are asked to make them brief) and each new- 
born Columbia man invariably begins by an apt refer- 
ence to his Fellow Alumni. 

The president's admirable summary of the year just 
closing, which brings these proceedings to the end, is 



OTHER PAGEANTS 225 

looked forward to by the alumni as perhaps the most 
important announcement of the year. I well remember 
the scene at the luncheon in 1903, when the president 
of the graduating class was discovered listening through 
a keyhole to Dr. Butler's announcement that he had 
been instrumental in providing the dormitories for which 
the alumni had so long been waiting. The boy wished 
to hear what was said, but feared the plaudits of the 
multitude. 

After the luncheon everyone moves to South Field, 
where the younger classes, after the prevailing fashion 
of the day among American universities, garb themselves 
in weird costumes and perform to the edification of the 
onlookers. Then comes the baseball game, which the 
" Varsity " is seldom considerate enough to win. Then 
come a series of class dinners. After various experi- 
ments, more or less successful, the simplest method of 
entertaining the alumni after dinner has turned out to 
be to let them entertain themselves by singing, and 
hundreds of the alumni on each commencement night 
now gather on the steps of the Library and, to t"he 
accompaniment of a good band, sing to their hearts' 
content and to the enjoyment of the thousands of citi- 
zens that gather in the court below. 

Columbia is rather notable for its academic pageants, 
and perhaps a summary of some of these other than the 
commencement exercises may be of interest. In 1837 
there was a semi-centennial of the foundation of Colum- 
bia College undertaken on the initiative of the students. 
A bitter controversy between the trustees, faculty, 
and alumni prevented any celebration of the centenary 
of the founding of King's College in 1854. The double 
birthday, already referred to, makes these centennials 



226 AN ACADEMIC YEAR 

occur with suspicious frequency. The centenary of 
Columbia College was celebrated in 1887, on which oc- 
casion many honorary degrees were granted and three 
or four thousand people were present. Three years later 
the inauguration of President Low was made the occasion 
of suitable academic ceremony. At the inauguration of 
his successor, eleven years later, there were present the 
President of the United States, the Governor of the 
State, and the Mayor of the City, all of whom had "been 
students at Columbia. In 1896 the new site of the 
University and the six new buildings then erected had 
been dedicated. 

Then came the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary 
of the founding of King's College. Perhaps the largest 
number of persons ever gathered together at Columbia 
was on this occasion at the reception of the trustees, 
when between fifteen and twenty thousand people were 
upon the grounds. 

From Commencement, which is held on the first 
Wednesday in June, to the end of that month is the 
home stretch of the year. All of the administrative and 
many of the teaching officers are very busy with duties 
which, though not of particular public interest, must 
needs be attended to. The most conspicuous event 
of the month is the conduct of the examinations of 
the College Entrance Examination Board. They bring 
to the Faculty Club a number of readers from 
institutions all over the country, who fit as ac- 
ceptably into our academic life as do the visiting 
professors at the Summer Session a fortnight later. 
"When one views all the modern machinery and organi- 
zation for the conduct of these examinations, it is inter- 
esting to remember that only threescore years ago the 



THE HOME STRETCH 



227 



entire business of the admission of students was held 
in the small chapel by a triumvirate, the president sit- 
ting in the middle, the professor of classics on one side 
and the professor of mathematics, with his blackboard, 
on the other. 




VIII 
CONCLUSION 

The Present Status. Factors Affecting the Future. Scheme of 
Organization. Externalism. The Burden of Proof. Need for 
Elasticity. Alumni Inlluonce. Gaps in Present Offering. Re- 
stricted Space and Limitation of Numbers. Financial Support 
and Requirements. Points of Contact. Academic Co-operation. 
Other Relations. Local Ties. Responsibilities. Teaching. Re- 
search. Public Service. Outlook. The Place of the University. 

Even a concluding chapter, which endeavors to give 
any forecast as to the future of an organization so very- 
much alive as Columbia, must at the best be rather 
inconclusive. Stranger things have happened than that 
an earthquake should bring Macaulay's hypothetical 
New Zealander to the ruins of St. John's Cathedral in- 
stead of St. Paul's; and even if no catastrophe should 
come to the city upon which the University depends so 
vitally, no man can forecast what social and intellectual 
earthquakes the future has in store, nor how they will 
affect our higher education. 

Our American universities owe their present charac- 
ter to four strains of influence : that of the English uni- 
versity, coming through the independent college; that 
of the intensely practical early professional schools of 
America, and that of the German university. The 
fourth element, while not so definite, is perhaps the 
most important of all, the intense national interest of 
our people in higher education. Columbia University 
has been splendidly endowed " by nature, by the ad- 
vance of civilization, by the lives and bounty of men." 
In his book on Great American Universities, Dr. Slos- 

238 



FACTORS AFFECTING THE FUTURE 229 

son emphasizes the several factors with regard to 
Columbia, Its position in the largest city has given 
it the chance to become the greatest of American uni- 
versities and it seems to be improving the chance. Its 
administration has been efficient, progressive, and cour- 
ageous. He speaks also of the spaciousness and beauty 
of the buildings, of rapid development, amounting almost 
to complete transformation within fifteen years, and of 
the spirit of initiative and liberality in the institution as 
a whole. He believes the six-year combined academic 
and professional programs to be of great importance, 
and gives Columbia credit for having done more than 
any of the State universities, and more than all of the 
women 's colleges for the education of women. He recog- 
nizes the honorable history and vigorous present of the 
professional schools, and throughout the institution the 
simultaneous service to scholarship and to the public. 
He concludes by saying: *' Columbia University has 
the essential qualities for success, initiative, adaptabil- 
ity, and opportunity. If it continues to progress as it 
has in recent years, it is likely to take a position among 
the universities of the country similar to that of New 
York among the cities." 

Can we, however, assume that this progress will be 
continued? Setting aside the chance of any physical 
or social cataclysm, and assuming practically the same 
environmental conditions as have prevailed for the past 
quarter century, there are, nevertheless, certain ques- 
tions which must be faced by one who attempts to look 
into the future. Is the scheme of organization and 
government which now controls the University one 
under which it will continue to perform its best service 
to the community ? Is its future conditioned by any defi- 



230 CONCLUSION 

nite lack in its present offering? How will limited space 
and the question of numbers affect the future? Is the 
financial support likely to increase or decrease? What 
of its relationship to other institutions of learning and 
to the community at large, particularly to the city of 
New York? Will it be able to maintain and develop 
its threefold function — teaching, research, and other 
public service ? Will it, finally, be able to retain a clear 
untroubled gaze into the future? 

There is to-day considerable petulance and some seri- 
ous criticism as to the conditions of organization and 
particularly of emphasis in our American universities. 
It is easy to blame the status quo for the common frail- 
ties of human nature and we may dismiss much of the 
utterances of some of our academic pathologists, who 
appear to believe that whatever is, is wrong, and appar- 
ently read the Scripture verse somewhat as follows: 
" The present letter killeth, but our particular kind of 
letter would give light if we had a chance to enforce 
it." It should be remembered, too, that they are pro- 
tected from actual martyrdom by the very fact that 
their immolation, even though this may be richly de- 
served for the crime of academic bad manners, would 
be immediately attributed to the existence of the awful 
conditions they imagine and set forth. One of the aca- 
demic worthies called in by the Columbia trustees for 
advice, in 1857, gave this very sensible counsel: "If 
there be disagreement and dissatisfaction in the Faculty, 
I should never attempt to smother it. Let it explode — 
much the safest way — in some regular manner." Some 
rich malefactor with a grim sense of humor should found 
a university, appoint to his faculties only men of this 
type, and then let the world see how they would run 
themselves. 



EXTERNALISM 231 

Even though epithets are not arguments, however, the 
presence in our academic community of those who wield 
the dagger of lath is not a bad thing. Experience shows 
that from time to time the right path may be pointed 
out as clearly with this instrument as with another. 
Some of the critics, moreover, are more temperate, and 
certain changes which they recommend have already 
been made in the organization of Cornell and are under 
consideration at the University of Illinois. 

Professor Stratton of the University of California 
says that what he believes to be our evil conditions come 
primarily from a passion in our people for visible ac- 
complishment, a love of dimension, an admiration for 
alert administration, for forceful public utterance, which 
things he groups under the term " externalism. " In 
his judgment European universities have a constitution 
that might have come from some American political 
theorist. American universities are as though founded 
and fostered in some hotbed of aristocracy. He and 
other critics point to the organization of the German -uni- 
versities as a model to follow, and fear that the central- 
ization of power and responsibility in the trustees and 
president here will ultimately kill scholarly and scientific 
initiative and enthusiasm and drive out of the academic 
life the very men upon whom the university must de- 
pend for its greatest usefulness. " Great personalities 
make great universities, and great personalities must 
be left free to grow and express themselves each in his 
own way if they are to reach the maximum of efficiency. ' ' 
Are these men right or are the men who believe like 
President Butler — to whom, by the way, the quotation 
above should be credited — that the secret of the success 
of the present system of academic administration in 
America is that the trustees and the president view 



232 CONCLUSION 

the university as a whole and in its largest public rela- 
tions, rising above the temporary interests of individual 
teachers, departments, faculties, or schools? " The uni- 
versity is a living and growing society of men, some 
of whom are charged with the direct responsibility for 
its policy and government and all of whom are charged 
with responsibility for the ideals and the character of 
the university and for its larger relationships to the 
public." 

If we are indeed in danger from extemalism, Colum- 
bia should consider her ways with care, for, free as she 
is from all external control of state, church, or even of 
her own alumni, any change in her organism must, if 
it come at all, come from within. There is no doubt 
as to the relatively high degree of her centralization 
among American universities, and it is possible that 
much of our academic machinery, perhaps necessary in 
the days of organization, might now be discarded. To 
quote Dr. Slosson once more : ' * The summer session has 
somewhat the same good effect on a university that a 
camping trip has on a city man. It shows how many of 
the necessities of life one can get along without. En- 
trance examinations, restrictions, classifications, regula- 
tions, segi-egations, conformity, positions, customs, and 
the like tend to lose their importance to one who has 
served through a summer session or two." Academic 
machinery should never be allowed to dominate the 
teacher nor to gain control of the imagination of the 
teacher and the taught. 

Perhaps, too, the trustees and the president — who, by 
the way, are under no illusions as to their ability to make 
mistakes like other people — may keep more clearly in 
mind than they have sometimes done in the past the 
ever-present danger of forgetting, under the high pres- 



THE BURDEN OF PROOF 233 

sure of our American life, to consult with those likely 
to be affected by any proposed change. When such con- 
sultation is held, say with regard to a new appointment, 
the result is that, without any formal responsibility for 
what happens, the professors of any academic field really 
appoint their new colleagues. "While the technical re- 
sponsibility lies with the president, he would never feel 
justified in going over the advice of those already in 
service in a field closely connected with that in which a 
new appointment is to be made. So far as the trustees 
of Columbia are concerned, it is certain that they have 
been at their best when dealing with general problems; 
at their worst when trying to control details of adminis- 
tration, particularly in the professional schools. That 
a man is a brilliant lawyer or a successful practitioner 
of medicine does not constitute him an expert as to the 
educational preparation for either of these professions. 

As to any fundamental change in our academic or- 
ganization, however, ought not the burden of proof to 
lie with the critics? We must not forget the extraor- 
dinary development of higher education in the United 
States under the present system, and the further fact 
that English and Continental universities, observant 
of this development, are moving toward some such sys- 
tem as we at present have, particularly in the constitu- 
tion of the office of president, a peculiarly American 
invention. It may be asked also whether the reason 
the German universities can have their outward appear- 
ance of democracy is not because of the strong cen- 
tralized Kultusministerium in the background, just 
as in America the colleges certificating for admission 
can maintain a "more generous than thou" attitude 
only because behind them stand either the strong ex- 



234 CONCLUSION 

amining colleges or a strong centralized system of state 
control of education. The historical background of the 
European professorship is so different from that of the 
American that a system which has grown up naturally 
here is more likely to be effective than one borrowed from 
across the Atlantic. 

After all, does not most of the difficulty arise from 
two intellectual confusions, first between government 
and administration, and second between constructive ad- 
ministration and routine administration? Matthew Ar- 
nold said that he who administers governs, because he 
infixes his own mark and stamps his own character upon 
all affairs as they pass before him. He, however, 
was speaking of the British aristocracy; and to-day it 
looks as if their administration were resulting less and 
less in their government of the English people. When 
actual administrative work is done by faculty com- 
mittees, as is so often the case throughout the coun- 
try, it is performed usually inefficiently and always 
wastefully. The wastefulness is the more dangerous 
because it is not at first evident. Indeed, the super- 
ficial impression is that money is being saved. Of course, 
the cost must really be measured in what the members 
of the committee might be doing with the time and energy 
which they devote to tasks for which by temperament 
and training they are ordinarily far from being well 
fitted. So far as academic legislation is concerned, ad- 
ministrative people may chafe under the formalities and 
delays that precede faculty action ; but in our moments 
of sanity we know that such action means building upon 
a broader and surer foundation. At Columbia a definite 
effort has been made to keep these fundamental distinc- 
tions clearly in mind, and generally speaking there is 



THE BURDEN OF PROOF 235 

little loss of power through friction between the teaching 
and administrative officers. 

It has been said, I think truly, that the university 
president's power is just what his personality and 
knowledge make it. If he can support his views by 
convincing reasons, he can get them accepted alike by 
departments, faculties, and trustees. If he fails in this, 
there is such a thing as an academic recall, and it is 
not infrequently put into operation. The president 
usually gets in the not very long run about what he 
deserves. He reaps where he did not sow, but he reaps 
the results of other men's foolish acts as well as of their 
wise ones. The president, as one of my colleagues has 
pointed out, is held responsible not only for the penchant 
for academic suicide which rages from time to time in 
university circles, but also for the inconsiderate lon- 
gevity of many of those who occupy university chairs. 
As President Low used to say, his duties often seemed 
to lie mainly in the giving and receiving of pain. 

One fundamental advantage of centralized control not 
always realized is that progress is necessarily made by 
concentration of emphasis upon one thing at a time, 
a procedure almost impossible without such control. 
It has been pointed out that our center of gravity lay 
from 1858 to 1880 in the College, from 1880 in the 
School of Political Science, and later in the other 
graduate schools. In 1902 it moved into the College 
of Physicians and Surgeons, then again to Columbia 
College, and it is now swinging toward Applied Science 
and other branches of vocational training. 

Once in so often, also, any faculty will fall into a 
rut, and in nearly every case the first move toward im- 
provement must come from without. It may vary in 
vigor from a delicate suggestion to a definite exercise 



236 CONCLUSION 

of authority, but in any case it is a kind of step which 
the colleagues of the offending men are notoriously — and 
quite naturally — slow to take. Even among their own 
immediate colleagues, faculties are not particularly 
likely, as experience has shown, to ensure efficient teach- 
ing. Cases also might be pointed out of intolerance of 
teachers to one another, either within departments or di- 
rected against academic newcomers. Faculties also are 
prone not only to neglect much needed action in some 
directions, but to take hasty and ill-considered steps 
in others. In particular they have a mania for changing 
regulations, failing to realize that " three moves are as 
bad as a fire." All of which goes to say that teachers 
no less than trustees and administrators are but human. 

Whether or not the present system of control checks 
the freedom of action of professors, it certainly does not 
check their freedom of speech. It has been said 
that there are just two classes of people in the com- 
munity at the present time who are perfectly free to 
say out loud what they think — tramps and university 
professors. In the recent national campaign, all of the 
candidates for the presidency, including the socialist, 
had vehement and outspoken support from university 
chairs at Columbia. 

Side by side with those who sincerely believe that 
trustees and president are spoiled, there are those who 
believe that professors are. These latter point to the 
fact that some of the veiy best work that has been done 
by scientists has been done by men not only engaged 
in teaching, but literally overburdened with teaching du- 
ties and denied every suitable scientific equipment, and 
they ask whether the increase in opportunities that have 
come to the professor of to-day has brought about a 
corresponding increase in important output. More than 









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o 

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H 
O 

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GC 
OD 
03 




NEED FOR ELASTICITY 237 

one member of a university staff coming from profes- 
sional life has expressed surprise at the amount of aca- 
demic leisure appropriated by some of his colleagues. 

It seems to me that more important than any one 
scheme of organization is the preservation of elasticity, 
and since 1890 Columbia has possessed in notable degree 
this elasticity. It is not a bad thing for the pendulum 
to swing first toward centralization and then away from 
it. One has yet to find any device in a complex organi- 
zation the benefits of which are not in greater or less 
degree counterbalanced by corresponding defects. 

The problems of organization that arise are prob- 
lems of living and growing matter, not of necrosis. A 
university is more often under fire for being ahead of 
the times than for being behind them and, as President 
Butler has said: " We are a result, in large measure, 
of the amazing and complex social, intellectual, and eco- 
nomic forces that play upon us. We can combine; we 
can check; we can accelerate, we can assist, we can for- 
ward, we can retard ; but I question very much whether 
this stream of academic progress could be dammed up 
and checked into a lake or stagnant pool by any 
power. ' ' 

Assuming, as one fairly may, that all concerned — 
trustees, president, and faculties — are actuated by a 
desire for the general good rather than for personal 
glory and aggrandizement, it would appear to be wiser 
to endure the evils that we have than fly to others that 
we know not of. This does not mean, however, that in- 
dividual steps should not be taken along the lines desired 
by certain professors. It might be well, for example, to 
try the experiment of having a certain proportion of 
the trustees elected upon the nomination of the faculties, 



238 CONCLUSION 

as a certain proportion is now elected upon the nomina- 
tion of the alumni. I doubt whether anything par- 
ticular would happen, except that the minds of some 
of our colleagues would be eased. It would be well also 
to develop some organic relationship between the de- 
partments and the trustees through the University- 
Council, a link that is now lacking in our system. This 
would bring the men who do not sit in any faculty closer 
to the center of things. 

Happiness and content on the part of the teaching 
staff are surely factors of the greatest importance in the 
welfare of the University. The teachers with the adult 
members of their families make a community of nearly 
two thousand souls, and, whether it is advisable to do 
anything to change the present constitutional system, 
there is no doubt that certain social developments are 
needed. The Faculty Club is to-day one of the great 
powers in the institution, and the women have recently 
organized a similar club of their own. The President's 
House is doing much as a general social center. Further 
social opportunities for the men and women of the com- 
munity are, however, needed, notably a faculty apart- 
ment house. 

If one may judge by the experience of other institu- 
tions, one factor in the organization of Columbia Uni- 
versity likely to become more and more prominent is 
that of alumni control. This is in many cases not con- 
stitutional, but it is none the less real. No one can over- 
estimate the value of alumni loyalty and interest, but 
these do not come without bringing problems with them. 
Even the eminently desirable activities of alumni in 
bringing students to their own Alma Mater is in many 
cases not to the interest of the boy or the college. The 
whole business of the stimulation of student attendance 



ALUMNI INFLUENCE 239 

is, as President Pritchett has been the first to point 
out, now being overdone. There is not as yet sufficient 
emphasis on the point of view which regards collegiate 
or professional training coldly and deliberately as an 
investment on the part of the student. As some of our 
sister institutions have found out, there is a real dan- 
ger of over-emphasis by the alumni on college life, and 
particularly conventionalized college life, and an unwill- 
ingness to let students and teachers work out their own 
salvation. The Quarterly a few years ago referred to 



" what Lowell might have called a certain condescen- 
sion in alumni — particularly in the assumption that the 
university administration, as such, is in some way in- 
capacitated from appreciating the value of the extra- 
curricular factors in the training of its students. There 
is no question that the university needs and will always 
welcome alumni criticism, be it favorable or otherwise, 
and perhaps we are rushing unwisely to its defense ; but 
it seems to us that the judgments of alumni with regard 
to their alma mater would be of even greater value than 
they are at present, if the attitude of the alumni were 
always to reflect an appreciation of the following two 
factors. The first is that, after all, alumni do not cease 
to be alumni when they return to their alma mater as 
officers. More than a quarter of our professors were 
undergraduates at Columbia, many of them men whose 
contributions to the extra-curricular educational factors 
were not inconsiderable. . . . The second thing is that 
the university must of necessity insist that its first busi- 
ness is the efficient carrying out of its programs of 
study. The other things are important, and no one 
realizes this better than the university, but they simply 
could not exist at all except as adjuncts to a central 
unit of academic work. In the questions that are con- 
stantly arising as to the wisest adjustment between this 
central unit and other student interests, the university 
officers may sometimes err on the side of over-apprecia- 



240 CONCLUSION 

tion of the academic aspect of things, but, after all, 
they may be counted upon to approach these problems 
with the broadest interests of the university, as they 
conceive them, at heart, and with no inconsiderable 
knowledge of both sides of the question. It has been 
the experience of practically every institution that deci- 
sions which at first seemed to the most loyal of alumni 
to be serious errors have, in the fullness of time, come 
to be recognized as wise and far-seeing advances." 

Let us now consider the conditions in its present offering 
which might limit the continued progress of the insti- 
tution. An essential element in the development of a 
great university is the interrelation of its several parts, 
one to another. Columbia is fortunate in being un- 
usually well balanced, both in her covering of the vari- 
ous fields of knowledge and of her relative strength in 
each. The statistics of American universities show that, 
although Columbia is by far the largest in total num- 
bers, she is the largest in only two particular schools. 
Teachers College, indeed, due to its comparatively new 
and unoccupied field, and to the forehandedness of its 
administration, has tended to grow out of proportion 
to other parts, but the rivalry of the State universities 
in the field of education and its own limitations of space 
are likely to make this condition a temporary one. 

There are, however, certain definite gaps in the offer- 
ing of the University, and, as the dyspeptic said about 
the digestive juices, the most important components are 
those which are not secreted in sufficient quantities. The 
Faculty of Pure Science has recently been shot to pieces 
by calls to presidencies and other causes and has not yet 
resumed its normal strength. Funds are needed for 
research in various fields. Geography needs more at- 
tention, and Japanese and Russian are at present wholly 
neglected. No one realizes better than our medical fac- 



GAPS IN PRESENT OFFERING 241 

ulty that at present the doctor from the small city or 
the country is more likely to go to Chicago, Baltimore, 
Boston, or St. Louis — to say nothing of Rochester, Min- 
nesota — than to New York for opportunities for profes- 
sional inspiration and enlightenment. It is, therefore, 
unlikely that the present relative weakness in facilities 
for post-graduate medical training is likely to be per- 
manent. 

Columbia's most fundamental lacks, however, are in 
the field of Fine Arts and in the support of the Library. 
The organization of the different elements now here, 
and the addition of others to make a real school of 
fine arts, has been under discussion for more than a 
decade, but the problem has not yet been satisfactorily 
solved. The scheme of co-operation with the National 
Academy of Design in 1905 proved abortive, and to-day 
Columbia makes no pretense, in spite of excellent work 
by a few individuals, to represent adequately the art 
element in life and in civilization. It must be remem- 
bered that as yet we have no traditions of art in this 
country. Our Puritan forefathers came here believing 
that they had left art behind as one of the luxuries that 
were to be condemned, but, as Professor Robinson has 
pointed out, art is not to be regarded as one of the 
luxuries of life, and it has never been so regarded among 
the people among whom it has flourished. Weakness on 
the aesthetic side is indeed common to all American 
universities, and the first to remedy the defect will be 
taking a step of great importance. 

During the past twenty-five years the sums appro- 
priated to the care of buildings and grounds (not for 
construction) have increased more than twice as rapidly 
as have those for the library. As a result, in spite of 
its half-million volumes and in spite of many books of 



242 CONCLUSION 

particular interest and of special collections dealing with 
definite topics, the library as a whole is not one of the 
strongest features of the University's equipment and 
there is nowhere that the trustees would more gladly wel- 
come an endowment than for the purchase of needed books. 

A related weakness is the absence of facilities for 
scholarly publication. The example of Chicago and more 
recently of Yale and Princeton, to say nothing of what 
our own University Press has done under its present 
handicaps, should call attention to what might be accom- 
plished by this Press if it were adequately manned and 
handsomely endowed. 

In certain fields, where Columbia now stands hesi- 
tatingly and ineffectually, she should either go forward 
vigorously, if this can be done without undue cost to 
her more firmly established interests, or she should with- 
draw. Such fields are landscape architecture, agricul- 
ture, and forestry. We have gone a little further in 
public hygiene and preventive medicine, but not far 
enough. The strangest fact is that, in the greatest com- 
mercial center of the new world, no proper provision 
has been made by its largest university for commercial 
education. Threescore years ago President King 
strongly urged the establishment of a school of com- 
merce. One was announced in 1899, to be conducted 
in co-operation with the New York Chamber of Com- 
merce, but to-day work in this field, which is growing 
hourly in importance and significance, is confined to 
extension classes. 

Columbia moved to its present site with the fal- 
lacious expectation that it would there have elbow-room 
for many years to come. Less than ten years ago it was 
possible to take a photograph from the northwest which 



RESTRICTED SPACE AND NUMBERS 243 

showed every one of the University buildings at Mom- 
ingside. Owing both to the development of the sur- 
rounding property in the erection of large apartment 
houses and the growth of the University itself, such 
a picture could to-day be taken only from an aeroplane. 
This hemming in on all sides of the University is likely 
to be an important factor in the future limitation of its 
students. This is particularly true since certain addi- 
tional buildings are still urgently needed. Playgrounds 
and a stadium may be provided elsewhere, but dining 
halls and other buildings for students and larger assem- 
bly rooms must come upon the present site. Something 
of course might be accomplished by an even more in- 
tensive use of the present buildings. Teachers College 
increased the use of the Household Arts buildings fifty 
per cent, by an ingenious rearrangement of its schedule. 

It is true also that certain parts of our work might 
be moved to other situations in the city or elsewhere, 
but the results of having the Medical School three miles 
away, and the very moderate success of the experimental 
extension classes in Brooklyn, Newark, and other cen- 
ters, do not indicate the desirability of further decen- 
tralization. 

Other factors than the limitation of area will com- 
bine with it in making the problem of limitation in num- 
bers an ever-present one. The recent growth of uni- 
versities, and especially universities located in large 
cities, is, as Professor Calvin Thomas has pointed out, 
a world-wide phenomenon due in part to complex 
social and economic causes which are beyond our con- 
trol or direction. Perhaps the greatest single factor is 
the constantly broadening foundation caused by the rap- 
idly increasing numbers of those who graduate from the 
public high schools. 



244 CONCLUSION 

It should not be impossible to solve in part the 
problem of limitation of numbers, if each separate unit 
of organization could find some way to pick out those 
best worth training. Particularly in the professional 
schools, furthermore, one may count upon sudden and 
often inexplicable reduction in the numbers of those 
desiring to enter any particular calling. This has al- 
ready happened in medicine, which like law is in a meas- 
ure engaged in attempting to remove the reasons for 
its existence, and it is now operating in various 
branches of engineering. Indeed, the percentage 
of growth in the entire institution from 1912 to 1913 
was only six and one-half per cent., a much lower rate 
than that of the University of California, for example, 
which would indicate that our period of very rapid in- 
crease has come to a close, and that, so far as the present 
offering is concerned, Columbia's position as the most 
largely attended university is likely to be but tempo- 
rary. Contrary to the general belief, this would be 
welcomed as a relief rather than deplored as a disaster. 

The real difificulty will lie in the limiting the number 
of units ; for, even if some of the particular fields men- 
tioned above are abandoned, others are sure to arise and 
demand academic recognition. Dean Russell has pointed 
out that any vocation with intellectual possibili- 
ties in which specialized knowledge is rationally, 
ethically, and skillfully applied in practical af- 
fairs, becomes ipso facto a profession. Some of these 
new professions can now be seen actually in the making, 
as, for example, that of the specialist in governmental 
administration. Many of these new fields would indeed 
involve little or no extra expense, but merely a regroup- 
ing of existing facilities. It has been suggested, for 
example, that Columbia might wisely follow the exam- 



FINANCIAL SUPPORT AND REQUIREMENTS 245 

pie of London University and establish a laboratory 
of eugenics, through the combined force of its biological, 
medical, and sociological departments, and the co-opera- 
tion of its theological allies. "While up to a certain limit 
a university is blessed in so far as it sows beside all 
waters, there exists a real danger lest an institution 
should spread itself so thin as to become a polytech- 
nicum rather than a university, a change which would 
affect not only the institution as a whole, but its every 
part. The solution would seem to lie in a dividing up 
of the field by agreement among different institutions, 
local and national, a matter to which reference will be 
made further on. 

The time will surely come when the question of re- 
moving certain existing parts will come up and the pro- 
posal to cut out the undergraduate colleges will undoubt- 
edly be among the first to arise. The undergraduate 
college, however, is the most characteristic feature of 
our American system of education. It has, particularly 
in institutions like Columbia, a vital function in tying 
the whole institution together in many ways already 
pointed out, and vigorous and enthusiastic youth has 
its lessons to give as well as to learn. The honors 
courses seem to furnish a clew to the possibility of main- 
taining in a university, no matter how large and over- 
crowded, a place for earnest undergraduates, not grinds, 
but boys with red blood, of real intellectual curiosity and 
promise. 

What can one foretell as to the financial support of 
an institution like Columbia? Professor Munroe Smith 
has pointed out that ' ' what the rich men of the country 
hold, they have and hold by the aid of the university 
teachers of the natural and social sciences. These ask 



246 CONCLUSION 

nothing for themselves but the opportunity to serve the 
country and the world in serving science. They desire 
no retaining fee to induce them to tell the truth as God 
gives them to see the truth. But they feel that every rich 
man owes his tithe to science, and that this tithe should 
be paid to the temple of science, the university." Will 
Columbia continue to get its present share of these 
contributions ? 

Its support has come in the past primarily from the 
citizens of New York, as has been already shown. Thus 
far experience has confirmed Mr. Low's statement of 
twenty years ago that he esteemed it a part of the 
good fortune of both city and university that the time 
has come when Columbia must be a constant, importu- 
nate, and successful beggar. It must not be forgotten, 
however, that the additions to our prosperity thus far 
have in many cases been of such a character as to increase 
expenditure far more than to increase income and that 
our endowment is very unevenly distributed. Upon this 
subject President Butler has said : 

** The ethics of academic giving is as yet an unex- 
plored field. It offers many and inviting problems to 
the student of morals and of public policy. It would 
be very easy, by the exercise of ordinary business judg- 
ment, to make the millions now given each year for 
education in the United States many times as pro- 
ductive as they are. New and unnecessary institutions 
are established out of the vanity of one man or the 
ambition of another, when the money to be devoted to 
their establishment would be at least twice as productive 
if put into hands already tested and experienced and 
added to the resources of some well-established institu- 
tion of the higher learning. Funds given for specia? 
purposes would almost always be more wisely spent if 
given to promote the general ends for which a uni- 
versity, a library, a museum, or a hospital exists. But 



FINANCIAL SUPPORT AND REQUIREMENTS 247 

it takes men and women of large vision and broad sym- 
pathy to see this." 

The recent grants from the General Education Board 
and the Carnegie Foundation, made to the Johns 
Hopkins and Vanderbilt Universities respectively, en- 
courage one to feel that Columbia and other urban uni- 
versities, with their knowledge of the public need and 
the skill in meeting it which has come with long years of 
experience, may receive as time goes on greater oppor- 
tunities to co-operate with organizations of this char- 
acter, as well as with individual donors, in the effective 
use of funds devoted to the public welfare. 

One financial factor has been clearly set forth as to 
Teachers College by Dean Russell in a recent report, 
which applies with practically equal force to every other 
part of any ambitious institution : * ' If we maintain the 
standing of our instruction, expenditures are bound to 
increase automatically, because so many of our staff are 
still young in point of service and rightfully expect an 
annual increase in their salaries. The development of 
our field and the growth of other schools force us to 
keep our work to the front, and that tends annually to 
increase the cost of maintenance. Instead of larger 
classes and fewer professors, we must have smaller classes 
and more professors. ' ' 

In spite of strong probabilities of continuous support, 
Columbia must nevertheless be seriously upon its guard 
against over-development. We must bear in mind also 
the rapidly increasing support and wealth of the State 
universities. Another factor is the organization of sepa- 
rate institutions for research, and still another the ever- 
present possibility of the establishment of a national 
university in the city of Washington. To borrow a 
phrase from modern business, Columbia must always 



248 CONCLUSION 

have a care lest some development in the educational 
situation over which she herself can have no control 
should find her " over-extended." 

In the old days Columbia's points of contact with 
the outside world, even the outside academic world, 
were very few. Before the new blood called to the insti- 
tution as a result of the 1857 Report, one must, I think, 
go back nearly a century to Myles Cooper to find a man 
specifically called to New York to take a position in the 
institution, and from 1857 on but few were called until 
Mr. Low's time. To-day, of course, there is a constant 
interchange of individuals, perhaps most notably and 
significantly for us in the summer session. Our rela- 
tions with other institutions would be greatly strength- 
ened, however, by an adequate appointments office which 
would not only put our younger men in positions of 
strategic importance but keep us informed as to what 
those already placed were doing and learning elsewhere. 

Columbia has never attempted to dominate or patron- 
ize nearby institutions. Indeed, for most of her history 
she has not been in a position to do so. She has been 
successively outstripped in numbers by New York Uni- 
versity, Union, and Cornell. In view of the vigorous 
existence of these, and of Syracuse Universitj'-, Colum- 
bia has grown from a local to a national institution with- 
out the intermediate stage of State leadership. 

Columbia's different systems of exchange professor- 
ships have strengthened the ties not only with foreign in- 
stitutions, but with local ones as well, for of the Roose- 
velt professors thus far appointed more than half of 
those nominated by Columbia have come from Yale, 
California, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Chicago. "We are 
however too prone to forget that Columbia, though rela- 



ACADEMIC CO-OPERATION 249 

tively venerable among North American institutions, 
is just two centuries the junior of the University at 
Lima. In contrast to the progress of the University of 
Pennsylvania in this matter, the whole field of relation- 
ship with South America has thus far been neglected. 

Among the advances for the future in American 
higher education would seem to be a clearer realization 
that co-operation is wiser than rivalry, and that more 
conscious and deliberate tying together of its different 
elements is desirable. That universities should con- 
sciously work together is important, both in order to 
avoid waste and duplication of efforts and funds, par- 
ticularly in fields appealing to comparatively few stu- 
dents, and also as an antidote for that deadening pro- 
vincialism which develops and flourishes in places where 
one would least expect to find it. Although the Yale- 
Columbia scheme for co-operation in foreign service fell 
through, this furnishes no reason why other attempts 
should not be made. A specific field lies in the exten- 
sion of the principle of the combined college and profes- 
sional course so as to include the small independent col- 
lege, which is at present seriously penalized in this regard. 

There is now in existence an association of American 
universities and a similar association of the State insti- 
tutions, but their influence thus far has been disap- 
pointing. Indeed, more has been accomplished by meet- 
ings of men as individuals in learned societies, and in 
such bodies as the College Entrance Examination Board. 

Perhaps the line of progress toward closer relations 
among our American institutions will be found in indi- 
vidual acts of consideration. As early as the Park Place 
days, Columbia threw open her doors to the struggling 
College of Pharmacy and offered facilities in certain 
fields to the students of Annapolis, an invitation only 



250 CONCLUSION 

just accepted for the current year, when eighteen gradu- 
ates of the Naval Academy are studying in our engi- 
neering laboratories. She has made welcome presents 
of books to Virginia, William and Mary, and Toronto, 
when the libraries of these institutions had been de- 
stroyed by fire, and during the typhoid epidemic at Cor- 
nell, a few years ago, our classrooms and dormitories 
were thrown open to the students of that institution. 

More might be done also to encourage co-operative 
work among students by schemes like the joint summer 
school of mining practice, tried a few years ago, and 
the present inter-university competitions in architecture. 
The example of the German universities has led to at- 
tempts to stimulate migration among graduate students, 
but thus far these attempts have been neither vigorous 
enough nor intelligent enough to produce important 
results — which is unfortunate, for it is easier and less 
expensive to move individual students than to move the 
professors with their books and laboratories. 

"What are to be the relations of the University with 
the non-academic world? The liberal arts had their 
origin in the sharp antithesis between the life of leisure 
and the sordid duties of the slave, and even in Matthew 
Arnold's day the university was regarded as the home 
of lost causes and forsaken beliefs and unpopular men 
and impossible loyalties. It is, however, no longer re- 
garded as necessary or desirable to keep our universi- 
ties unspotted from the world. Intelligence, to quote 
Professor Woodbridge, is not given to man to be hidden 
away like the talent in the napkin, in fear lest it 
be soiled by the increment its exercise would earn from 
a material world, and instead of shunning, as Arnold 
advised, the crudity and grossness of utilitarianism, the 



OTHER RELATIONS 251 

universities are important factors in establishing a new 
and higher utilitarianism or, as it is called at Wisconsin, 
a utilitarian idealism. 

From the other side, the world without has for some 
years looked upon the university in a new light, and one 
college professor leaving the "White House as another en- 
ters it is not to-day the extraordinary phenomenon it 
would have been a generation ago. It is signifi- 
cant that the university is being constantly se- 
lected by organizations and individuals having 
no personal or ofifieial relations with it as a means of 
perpetuating the names of public servants like Waring, 
Curtis, and Gilder, and that funds are being volunteered 
to it for such purposes as research in advertising and in 
road-making. It is characteristic, too, that Joseph 
Pulitzer turned to a university to administer the striking 
series of prizes, amounting to about twenty thousand 
dollars annually, for meritorious work in various fields 
of practical endeavor, for which he made provision in 
his will. Society, too, is now calling on its own initiative 
for training in new professions and vocations, instead 
of having it imposed from above. All in all, there 
is no country except perhaps Scotland where the uni- 
versities come so close to the people as in America. 
A writer of the distinction of Arnold Bennett has 
never seen the inside of an English university. We can 
hardly believe that an American of the same caliber 
would not inevitably have come under the influence of 
one or another of ours. The danger with us, indeed, is 
not so much of aloofness and arrogance as that the 
universities may forget their function of leadership. It 
has been cynically pointed out that modern journalism is 
an example of giving the people exactly what they want. 
I think it was von Hoist who said that the preachers 



252 CONCLUSION 

of the doctrine that a good average is all that a plain 
democracy needs are the worst enemies of democracy. 

No argument is needed to prove the desirability of 
the closest relations between the urban university and 
the city of its home. Columbia is what New York has 
made it, and what she will be depends more than upon 
any other single factor upon her future relations with 
the city. Dr. Slosson has said that the University of 
Chicago might be anywhere, but Columbia, body and 
soul, is so thoroughly characteristic of New York City 
as to be quite inconceivable elsewhere. Its relations 
and inter-relations with the city are more like those of 
the Sorbonne in Paris than those between any other uni- 
versity and city. It has already achieved in large part 
the ideal relationship which the Royal Commission is 
trying to accomplish for London University. 

At the dedication of the site in 1896, Abram S. 
Hewitt, one of eight mayors Columbia has furnished 
to New York City, said: " Let it be remembered that 
we are here not to dedicate the building alone, but also 
to dedicate the responsibilities and duties of advancing 
civilization, the wealth, the energy, and potentialities 
of millions of men who will, in the ages to come, con- 
stitute the population gathered around this center of 
light and learning." The advantages which the Uni- 
versity may draw from its position in the city were 
never better summarized than in an editorial in the New 
York World twenty years ago, written to urge the city 
to furnish the funds which Columbia needed to estab- 
lish itself in its new home : 

" A great city like New York, and New York more 
than most great cities, holds educational possibilities 



LOCAL TIES 253 

which can be had nowhere else, and which can only be 
turned to account by a great university. As the center 
of the nation's activities — industrial, financial, and in- 
tellectual — New York has drawn to herself the very 
strongest men and the most conspicuous illustrative ex- 
amples in every department of endeavor. 

" The great hospitals are here, and the great surgeons 
are in attendance upon them. Our law courts deal with 
the largest and most complex questions. The student 
of economics has here the commerce and the finance of 
the world to study. The lecturer upon engineering or 
architecture has here the best illustrative examples with 
which to make his teaching effective. The student of 
literature studies in the midst of the creative literary 
activity of the continent, and, with his fellows, the 
students of history, philology, or what not, has access 
to some of the noblest reference libraries in the world. 
Here the arts of music and the drama have their best 
exemplification. Here are museums and galleries of the 
first order." 

Twenty years have brought even greater opportuni- 
ties. No other university center offers such a variety 
of phenomena, such diversity of interests and such views 
of social organization and progress. Eecent statistics 
show a collection of books in New York, Brooklyn, and 
Newark of more than five and one-half million volumes, 
to say nothing of the extraordinary private collections, 
and of the fact that New York is now one of the great 
book marts of the world. It is also one of the greatest 
engineering centers and the building of the allied so- 
cieties is the headquarters of fifty thousand engineers. 
The city has become a veritable museum of architecture 
and, what is more important, its practicing architects 
are showing the greatest interest in training for their 
profession. But it is needless to go into further details. 

What the University owes to the city financially, both 
directly and by the increased value of its real estate, 



254 CONCLUSION 

has been reiterated, doubtless to the point of tediousness, 
throughout these pages. Its growth in numbers is per- 
haps primarily due to the growth of the city, both in 
furnishing a local supply upon which to draw and be- 
cause it is becoming more and more generally recog- 
nized to-day by those outside it that the great city itself 
gives a view of life that is no small part of a student's 
education. 

With these advantages come corresponding responsi- 
bilities on the part of the institution. The first of these 
is that the latter must be where the city can get at it. 
As early as 1770 the American Farmer, in his famous 
Letters, regretted " that the new Academy had not 
been erected far away from the city, in some rural re- 
treat, where the scholars had been far removed from 
the tumults of business and the dissipations and pleas- 
ures that are so numerous in large cities." The ques- 
tion of becoming by removal to the country a daughter 
of Mary, to adapt Kipling's figure, rather than a daugh- 
ter of Martha, came up again and again, perhaps most 
acutely at the time of removal from Forty -ninth Street, 
but Mr. Low then reminded the trustees that Colum- 
bia had a distinct duty, historical and sentimental, for 
those who do not want to go from the city for their 
education, or who are unable to do so. Humanly speak- 
ing, the development of the present site has permanently 
settled the matter. 

In other ways the University is doing what it can to 
repay its obligations. Its buildings have been at the 
disposal of the city for scientific tests, and of the citi- 
zens as a meeting-place for any serious body of persons. 
In 1890, Mr. Low found that eighteen societies then used 
the College buildings for their meetings, and not many 
years later the total attendance upon such meetings in 



KESPONSIBILITIES 255 

University buildings had grown to over sixty thousand a 
year. No attempt is made to limit its services to those 
from whom it receives pay; and, as has already been 
pointed out, no one pays the full cost of what he re- 
ceives. The undergraduate curriculum has been modi- 
fied to articulate with the public school system and 
professional training has been provided to meet specific 
local needs as they have arisen. The extension classes 
have been maintained primarily to meet city needs. As 
early as 1895 the members of the Faculty of Political 
Science debated in public on the East Side questions of 
general interest to the community. The teachers of 
French and German have for many years been in close 
touch with the New York citizens interested in these 
literatures. The Deutsehes Haus contains an academic 
bureau of information, and similar provision will doubt- 
less be made in the Maison Frangaise. Columbia has 
been instrumental in founding, has fostered, and now 
provides permanent homes for various useful organi- 
zations, notably the Academy of Political Science, the 
American Mathematical Society, and the College En- 
trance Examination Board. The Public Library is re- 
lieved from purchases in certain fields through knowing 
that these will be looked after for the city by Colum- 
bia. It has been the policy of the trustees to put the 
scientific collections where they will do the most public 
good. Our herbarium is housed at the Botanical Gar- 
dens, certain of our fossils at the Museum of Natural 
History, and rare Spanish books with the Hispanic 
Society, 

All these are but typical examples of the desire of the 
University to pay its debt to the community, but even 
to pay the interest on that debt requires that new ways 
must constantly be found and developed. One way, 



256 CONCLUSION 

which like many another is reciprocal in its effect, is to 
teach the city and the citizens to do even more for it and 
for education in general. Every dollar that is spent 
in New York can be made an educational resource, if 
the persons who spend it have been properly trained. 
We hear a great deal about the education of the poor, 
but we must not forget the education of the rich. When 
rich men build houses they must be taught to make thcra 
architecturally educative. When they buy pictures and 
books they must be taught to have them available for 
people who can profit by studying them. When they 
establish factories they must see that these teach the best 
forms of industrial enterprise. When they buy theaters 
and newspapers they should do so with a far keener sense 
of their public responsibilities than is generally the case 
to-day. A man who gives largely to any public insti- 
tution should rightly have a good deal to say as to how 
the money should be spent, and he should withhold his 
aid from any institution, no matter how useful in itself — 
church, hospital, library, or what you will — lacking in 
its duty in the broad field of education. 

At first the only task of universities was to teach; 
with the nineteenth century came the obligations of re- 
search, and with the twentieth the problems of general 
service to the community. The first two are of course 
inherent in the third, as they are forms of public serv- 
ice of no mean order, but as matters of emphasis these 
may be regarded as three separate functions. What 
are the chances that Columbia will be able to carry on 
successfully this threefold obligation? 

Toaohing is no longer regarded as the mere providing 
of facts. To quote from an editorial in the University 
Quarterly: " The object of modern teaching is not to 



TEACHING 257 

make votaries, as many people suppose, but to make 
thinkers. Probably the best way to convert an average 
class to free trade would be to teach protection in a 
dogmatic spirit." The teacher's aim is to guide the stu- 
dent systematically to ever-growing independence in 
thinking. Columbia has always had her great teach- 
ers, but with her rapid growth the question of insisting 
throughout upon skilled teaching — and teaching is an art 
— has until very recently been rather neglected. If a 
professor happened to be a good teacher, so much the 
better, but, if he didn't, lio one but the students found 
it out, and in the professional and other prescribed 
courses they had to sit under him, whether or no. Some 
of the examples of thoroughly bad teaching collected by 
Professor Pitkin, when he was preparing a plea for the 
desirability of really teaching the young instructors of 
a university how to teach, are enough to make one shud- 
der. Particularly in the laboratory sciences, inexperi- 
enced youngsters were put in charge of large squads 
in important subjects, and bad teaching of the sciences 
is quite as dangerous educationally as bad teaching 
of the classics or of any other subject. Probably the 
same difficulty may be faced with the social sciences 
in the future, but at present the novelty of laboratory 
methods here keeps things up to the mark. 

President Butler has cried out as to the difficulties of 
making any attempt to improve the teaching of men 
already in service: 

** There is unfortunately no public opinion, either 
within a university or in the community at large, which 
will sustain the displacement of a teacher in school or 
in college simply because he cannot teach. If he is a 
person of good moral character, of reasonable industry, 
and of inoffensive personality, his place is perfectly se- 



258 CONCLUSION 

cure no matter what havoc he may make in the class- 
room. It is this inequitable security of tenure, the 
like of which is not to be found in any other calling, 
that attracts to the teaching profession and holds 
in it, despite its modest pecuniary rewards, so much 
mediocrity. 

" This is not so much a condition to be criticised 
as a fact to be reckoned with. Unless an ineffective 
teacher can be roused or stimulated into relative ef- 
fectiveness, it will probably be necessary to subject one 
generation of college students after another to his inca- 
pacity until death or the age of academic retirement 
comes to their relief." 

As a matter of fact, in many cases the trustees can and 
do appoint a stronger man to a chair in the same field, 
and in such cases the students can be counted upon to 
do their part. It has also been seriously suggested that 
by the adoption of some position like that of the 
docents in the German universities (where the junior 
teacher's income depends upon the number of his stu- 
dents) the question of stimulating emphasis on teach- 
ing might be solved. The important thing, however, 
is to appoint no new men to higher positions, barring 
geniuses, unless they are teachers of proved skill and 
devotion, and to give the younger men an opportunity 
to learn their trade, for teachers are made as well as 
born. Their o\\ti departmental seniors can do much, 
and in some cases are doing a great deal, but it is not 
to the credit of the University that thus far the op- 
portunities of Teachers College have not been adequately 
enlisted in this matter. 

In professional courses, Columbia has one great ad- 
vantago. tin advantage however that needs careful watch- 
ing. Ordinarily it is only in the city that it is possible 
to get men of eminence in the several professions to 




Ai-MA Matkh 



TEACHING 259 

devote at least a part of their time to academic duties. 
In certain fields this part-time service is absolutely nec- 
essary. In medicine, for example, the student is im- 
properly trained, if his experience is limited to the study 
of the inflammatory and organic diseases usually seen 
in ward service. He must learn from men in general 
practice about the various functional disturbances which 
are arising from the strains and worries of the twentieth 
century. In the past, however, too little attention in 
making these part-time appointments has been paid to 
the actual skill and interest of the professional practi- 
tioner in teaching itself. In a great city, however, the 
supply is practically unlimited, and, if sufficient time 
and care are taken, the right man can always be found. 

With the appointment of deans and the establish- 
ment in each faculty of a working committee on in- 
struction, the general average of teaching has been im- 
proved markedly, both through insistence on smaller 
sections and in care as to new appointments. In cer- 
tain cases, too, as in the undergraduate honors courses, 
and more recently in journalism, Columbia has broken 
away from stereotyped methods. Much has also been 
done indirectly toward bringing about a general recog- 
nition in the University that academic kudos in the form 
of promotion or otherwise depends more upon teaching 
service than was formerly supposed to be the case. The 
future may very possibly show that we are now doing 
too much teaching all along the line, but, however that 
may be, the realization is coming that whatever teach- 
ing is done should be of the first order, and that is the 
important thing. 

Closely related to teaching is the whole question of 
the stimulation to good work through competition. This 



260 CONCLUSION 

spirit of competition is already well developed in the 
professional schools through certain coveted positions 
(usually opportunities to do additional work) such as 
the Law Review, the prosectorships and hospital interne- 
ships in medicine, and also by the practical fact that 
a man's first appointment, and indeed his later profes- 
sional advancement, depends in large measure upon the 
judgment of the faculty as to his relative position 
among his fellows. It is strong also in Barnard, and is 
growing stronger in the College, where last year nearly 
a third of the class had records that rendered them 
eligible to Phi Beta Kappa election. It is weakest in 
the graduate school, as is the case throughout the coun- 
try, where too many of the students have been spoiled 
by subsidies, and idle away their time in the fond be- 
lief that they are doing research, and where too many 
others want a degree merely as a sort of intellectual 
whitewash. 

The good teacher teaches far more than his subject, 
and can even make some impression upon those three 
cardinal weaknesses of American youth — careless man- 
ners, intolerance, and a lack of a sense of responsibility. 
By suggestion rather than precept he can also influence 
the student to make provision for the profitable em- 
ployment of his leisure. Culture, as has been pointed 
out, is not a serum designed to furnish immunity for 
the future. Success in a business or professional career 
is a barren triumph if, when the means and time and 
money to gratify a man's individual tastes have come, 
he finds himself without intellectual or esthetic tastes 
to gratify — and many a college student who is to-day 
devoting all his moments to the mastery of the highly 
technical but profitless gossip and statistics of the side 
lines will come to realize this. 



TEACHING 261 

This is the day of emphasis on social consciousness, 
and, as a university lives primarily in its graduates, 
one of its primary teaching functions, and also one of its 
most important acts of public service, is to make each 
alumnus realize as he goes out into the world that his 
obligations are greater than his privileges, and more 
important. What Columbia has already done in this 
way is probably underestimated, owing to the habit in 
America of giving all the credit for a man 's accomplish- 
ments to his first college. The university, where he 
goes afterwards and where he probably receives much 
more serious intellectual stimulus, is seldom considered. 
In the past this part of the teacher's influence was 
largely unconscious, or at any rate unorganized, except 
on the strictly religious side, but to-day the ethical ele- 
ment in the practice of law is being emphasized delib- 
erately, as is the social responsibility of the engineer 
and doctor. The percentage of graduates of Columbia 
University who enter the profession of teaching itself 
is rapidly rising. Indeed, within the six years between 
two recent general catalogues it rose from four per cent, 
to thirty-three per cent., and is doubtless higher to-day. 
And no subject touches life on so many sides as teach- 
ing or, to quote Professor Dewey, " brings to itself such 
a wealth of material combined with such a stimulating 
outlook upon the past and the present of humanity." 
Not a few of the gifts that have come to Teachers Col- 
lege have come from practical idealists in the world of 
affairs, whose primary interest was in social betterment, 
but who realized that the surest step to this end was 
in the better training of teachers. 

In general, the undergraduates need little stimula- 
tion to interest themselves in social matters. Not 
the least of the reasons why the country boy who 



262 CONCLUSION 

intends to amount to something takes his college 
work in the city is because of the opportunity which 
he can get of studying at first-hand the social problems 
that are rapidly becoming the crucial question in our 
American civilization, and he studies them not merely 
as an onlooker, but as an active participant. Dozens 
of the undergraduates are now doing social work in 
settlements, churches, and other centers, and find this 
to be not the least important part of their education. 
To-day practically every undergraduate speech, where 
the student selects his own subject, and every essay in 
the college review, is upon some social topic. The teacher, 
hoAvever, can find much to do, not only in guiding the 
social interest when it already exists, but in stimulating 
it in students as yet unkindled. It is needless to say 
no attempt is made to throttle student radicalism. A 
student can find two thousand anarchistic books and 
pamphlets in the library, and the advanced social posi- 
tion of many of the professors is a matter of public 
knowledge. 

In all these matters the increasing emphasis upon per- 
sonal attention to each student is, of course, a factor 
of ever-growing importance, and, if we regard the term 
in its broadest sense, it is not the least vital part of the 
teaching of the institution. There is no doubt that 
the advocates, from necessity or choice, of the smaller 
institutions of learning point to figures like those at 
Columbia and those of the other large universities as 
constituting in themselves a danger of neglect to the 
individual student, but, as a university president has 
pointed out, it is just as easy for ten teachers to neglect 
two hundred students as it is for fifty teachers to neglect 
eight hundred, and just as likely that they will. The 
question has nothing whatever to do with size ; it has 



RESEARCH 263 

to do with the disposition and characteristics of the 
teacher. 

Of the three functions of a university, research is 
the most elusive. Countless sins have been committed 
in its name, but there is no question as to its vital im- 
portance. The spirit of investigation is indeed the most 
valuable of all natural resources. 

A graduate student worthy of the name is not con- 
tent merely to wander about the fields that others have 
cultivated, but wishes to push out from the settlements 
to reclaim some portion of the forests of ignorance, and 
he is willing to make the long preparation necessary to 
fit himself for this high calling. Those who succeed 
are among the happiest men in the world, and a handful 
of such students makes a university worth while. There 
is, however, a reverse side to the picture as sad as the 
other is joyous — the men who with all the good will in 
the world simply haven't it in them, men for whom no 
amount of training will make up for a lack in that natu- 
ral ability of a highly specialized type which is requisite 
for original research. There are too many students of 
this latter type in the universities to-day, and one of 
the tasks of the future will be to prevent as many as 
possible from entering upon a hopeless quest by devis- 
ing some other test of admission than the possession of 
a bachelor's degree, which as we all know may mean 
much or little or almost nothing. Furthermore, those 
who do get in must be eliminated, kindly but firmly, 
before they have wasted too much of their own time and 
that of the professors and of their fellow-students. 
All along the line more personal attention to each stu- 
dent is needed to make sure that the investigations are 
real and not pseudo-research, and also to guard against 



264 CONCLUSION 

the waste of precious funds. Another factor essential 
to the best progress for the future will be the finding 
of some other badge of alleged efficiency for teaching 
than the degree of doctor of philosophy. 

Dean Woodbridge, in discussing this question in the 
Association of American Universities, pointed out that 

** the degree as conceived in our rules aims at one thing 
and has a certain emphasis, while our educational situa- 
tion makes for a different thing and has a different em- 
phasis. The degree in theory is more representative 
of certain traditional university ideas than it is of the 
society which supports our universities or of the stu- 
dents who seek instruction under our graduate faculties 
or of the educational status of the different departments 
of knowledge. It stands more for an ideal imposed upon 
our culture than for an ideal growing out of our culture. 
The degree lays emphasis on sound scholarship and ad- 
vanced research ; the situation in which we find ourselves 
lays emphasis on individual ability and proficiency. The 
degree aims at being the badge of the proved investi- 
gator; the situation makes it an indication of compe- 
tency to perform certain services. In other words, the 
degree is conceived primarily with reference to a stand- 
ard and not primarily with reference to the preparation, 
needs, and aims of the students who are prepared to 
spend several years in university study, nor with refer- 
ence to the expansion of university courses and depart- 
ments." 

Every American university is encouraging students 
to undertake research in too many departments of 
knowledge. Mutual agreements, concentrating in single 
universities the fields necessarily narrow, would not only 
free funds now wasted and sorely needed for work in 
profitable fields, but would, by bringing the students 
together in larger units, do much to supply the intel- 
lectual rivalry now markedly absent. 



PUBLIC SERVICE 265 

The higher learning has not been without its share 
of snobbery and intolerance, and it is only recently that 
investigation in subjects of immediately recognized 
practical value has been regarded as worthy of the name 
of research, even with a small " r." Not so long ago 
Columbia University would have questioned the wisdom 
of accepting $75,000 for the study of legislative draft- 
ing, or of $50,000 for good roads. To-day research in 
education has been well organized, medicine is begin- 
ning to find itself, and law and engineering are feeling 
their way. The dean of the faculty of applied sci- 
ence is urging the trustees to erect a factory building 
to render the kind of service in commercial research that 
is already being given in Germany by many of the 
technical schools. 

It is too soon to say what will be the influence on 
the universities of the separately endowed research in- 
stitutions which are becoming a new and significant fea- 
ture on our intellectual horizon. So far as one can see, 
however, they will benefit the universities rather than 
harm them, both by providing a spur to greater accom- 
plishment and by furnishing a career to the men inter- 
ested in research who cannot or will not teach, and who 
up to the present have had to pretend to do so in order 
to earn a living and get the opportunity for investi- 
gation. 

The public usefulness of Columbia in teaching and 
research to-day may fairly be assumed from the num- 
bers of its students. Its public service in other ways 
is harder to measure, but there may be seen clearly on 
every hand a tendency to broaden out beyond depart- 
ment and professional bounds toward identification with 
the city, state, and country. The president has ex- 



266 CONCLUSION 

pressed the general feeling that " our material equip- 
ment and advantages are not regarded as ends in them- 
selves, but simply as so many means to that single higher 
end of service to which the university is devoted and 
for which it exists." 

The institution has an honorable tradition as to the 
public usefulness of its men. When the New York 
Chamber of Commerce opened its present building three 
statues were unveiled, all of Columbia graduates — 
Clinton, Hamilton, and Jay. The second Johnson, 
Mitchill, and Renwick were prominent public serv- 
ants, and later on Torrey, Lieber, Newberry, and Trow- 
bridge all rendered service of signal value to the Govern- 
ment at "Washington. Since 1849, Columbia's president 
has always been a public servant of distinction, as is also 
the present chairman of the trustees, George L. Rives. 

An important part of the public service of an insti- 
tution is in the academic and public utterances of its 
professors. Kent's Commentaries, it is said, have had 
a deeper and more lasting influence in the formation of 
the national character than any other secular book of 
the nineteenth century, and the influence of the later law 
teachers upon legal thought throughout the country, 
through their case books and the like, has been of the 
first importance. Few recent books have been so in- 
fluential for the public good as Professor Holt's on 
the care and feeding of children. The President's Re- 
port for 1913 contains a striking list of thirty-three 
recently published books of permanent importance by 
members of the University. In addition to Dean 
Russell's campaign to induce college-bred women to 
go into kindergarten and primary education and into 
the various practical arts, he has joined with Pro- 
fessor Dewey in making a far-reaching educational 



PUBLIC SERVICE 267 

recommendation. Realizing that for most children six 
years represents the entire period of formal training, 
they would lay during these years the soundest possible 
foundation. While retaining the traditional humanistic 
and scientific studies, they would substitute for the so- 
called " frills," which now occupy so much of the stu- 
dents' time, a single comprehensive and carefully co-or- 
dinated study — the elements of industry. 

The total amount and variety of outside service were 
never realized, even within the University, until the recent 
publication of a list, filling thirteen octavo pages, of the 
public and semi-public undertakings in which fully 
half the professors are now engaged. Some have been 
mentioned in a previous chapter, and it is impossible in 
this place to give a summary of Columbia's record in 
more than a single field. The kind of service likely to 
prove most rich to-day in possibilities for the betterment 
of mankind is perhaps in the field of internationalism. 
Until the publication of Moore 's monumental ' ' Digest of 
International Law," Lieber's Civil War " Instructions 
for the Government of Armies ' ' was the most important 
contribution which America had made to the law of na- 
tions. It was still a living and controlling document 
at The Hague in 1907. President Low served as a dele- 
gate to the first Hague Conference, To-day not only 
are men in the service of Columbia executive officers 
of the New York Peace Society and the Association for 
International Conciliation, but of the three great divi- 
sions of the Carnegie Endowment for the Advancement 
of Peace, the most important contribution in the field 
of International Law has been assigned to Professor 
Moore, Professor Clark is at the head of the division of 
Economics, and President Butler of the division of 
Intercourse and Education. 



268 CONCLUSION 

For the University as such to claim entire credit for 
the public services of its members would of course be 
absurd, but it does deserve its share, in the first place 
for the conscious selection of men of this type, and 
further for giving them the opportunity to pursue their 
public work and accepting it as creditable academic 
service. This, by the way, is a comparatively recent 
development. It will be remembered even the pro- 
gressive trustees of 1857 noted with evident approval 
that only three of the faculty ' ' wrote books, ' ' pre- 
sumably to the neglect of their stated duties. 

The opportunities for professors to interest themselves 
in outside public activities have been greatly increased 
by the development of functional administration in our 
universities. It is doubtless true that in some cases stu- 
dents suffer from too great devotion on the part of their 
professors to outside interests, but, by and large, the 
student as well as the institution derives benefit. There 
is such a thing as academic provincialism, and it is a 
thing to fear. 

A more definitely institutional contribution to public 
needs is the lending of men to meet some sudden pub- 
lic need. It has been found that university men can 
be rapidly mobilized for public service and, their tasks 
done, they return quietly to the ranks of teaching schol- 
ars. In times of fire and flood, Professor Devine was 
sent to San Francisco and to Dayton to administer re- 
lief funds. Professor Boas spent a year in IMexico to 
assist in the organization of a national university there. 
Professor Goodnow was loaned to the Economy Commis- 
sion at Washington for a year and is now on a three- 
year mission in China as constitutional adviser to the 
Republic. On various occasions Washington has bor- 



OUTLOOK 269 

rowed Professor Moore, who is at the moment in the 
service of the Department of State. 

Aside from the services of individuals, the University 
as an institution endeavors to do its share in move- 
ments of public importance. Whenever possible the dor- 
mitories are thrown open without charge to delegations 
visiting the city. Other buildings are turned over to 
bodies temporarily without a home — the National Acad- 
emy of Design after its recent fire, for example, and 
churches of various denominations. 

The Speyer Building was definitely constructed as a 
social center. At the Medical School, not only has the 
total free attendance at the Vanderbilt Clinic in the last 
decade exceeded three million and the cases at the Sloane 
Hospital approached thirty thousand, but social work- 
ers and visiting nurses are employed, and an animal hos- 
pital, an open-air public school for tubercular children, 
and a milk station are maintained. 

In one field of vital public importance, the providing 
of wider opportunities for women, Columbia has already 
done much, but it has still more to do. In undergradu- 
ate study and in preparation for certain professional 
and vocational work the situation is satisfactory, and 
Barnard College maintains a special officer to keep in 
touch with the movements now in progress to open up 
for college women various occupations other than teach- 
ing. But it is still true, as Professor Trent wrote some 
years ago, that " an intelligent and reputable human 
being, simply because the accident of birth has made her 
a woman, may be denied the advanced and specialized 
training in legitimate studies taught in Columbia Uni- 
versity to mortals differently attired. ' ' The most flagrant 
cases are, of course, law and medicine, since up to the 



270 CONCLUSION 

present there has been little demand on the part of 
women for training in engineering. 

It would seem that, partly from deliberate policy and 
partly from the incessant stimulation of the surround- 
ing city, Columbia is destined to continue directly or 
indirectly to make her contributions to general public 
service. Though the service will never be given for this 
reason, it is probably true that her financial resources 
for the future will largely depend upon her doing so, 
for gifts are likely to depend more and more as time 
goes on upon the general public usefulness of the 
recipient. 

Besides the complex problems of space and numbers, 
of identification with the community and willingness to 
serve it, all of which condition the future of a university, 
there still remains one to be considered, and that is the 
question of outlook. The living university must be not 
only a storehouse of the old thoughts, but a workshop of 
the new. Mr. Stokes has recently pointed out in the 
Yale Review that our most venerable universities (he 
mentions particularly Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Penn- 
sylvania, and Columbia) were centers of ardent patriot- 
ism and of progress in the Revolution and during the 
Civil War. " They must continue to be actively on 
the side of progress in solving the many social, po- 
litical, and industrial problems of to-day, or else forfeit 
their claim to represent the American people. Their 
contact with enthusiastic youth from all sections, com- 
bined with their firm sense of dependence upon the past, 
should make them well-balanced leaders in meeting the 
country's needs. Universities may be liberal, as in Rus- 
sia, or conservative, as in England, and yet continue 
forces for good. But the moment they become reaction- 



THE PLACE OF THE UNIVERSITY 271 

ary they will forfeit that respect of the people which is 
necessary for any successful institution in a democ- 
racy. ' ' 

No man can foresee the lines along which progress 
is to be made. The radical in youth is often the con- 
servative, even the reactionary, in after years, although 
youth is not always in the front rank and age in the 
rear. In any large body of men there will always be 
those looking backward and those looking forward. To- 
day Columbia, to quote an interesting recent newspaper 
article by an undergraduate, " through a large percent- 
age of her teachers and through many of her students, 
represents the type of university dedicated to progress 
and theories of betterment which have been almost en- 
tirely in the past the possession of European universi- 
ties. Its future usefulness depends upon the perma- 
nence of this condition more than upon any single 
factor. ' ' 

The past of Columbia University has had its vital 
share in what is best in the history and life of our nation, 
and particularly of our city, and the present is a period 
of splendid interest and activity. In the words of Presi- 
dent Butler: " So soon as one need appears to be met, 
twenty others spring up to take its place. . . . The 
glory of our task is that it cannot be finished. It is 
because it is alive, because it grows, because it is human, 
because it touches individual and public life in ten thou- 
sand points, that we never shall be done, and we never 
want to be done." 

I have tried in this concluding chapter to give some 
of the factors affecting its future, but after all this fu- 
ture cannot be regarded as a separate thing, it is bound 
up in the future of the university as an institution, and 
there is within my knowledge no more eloquent or in- 



272 CONCLUSION 

spiring outlook upon that future than in the words of 
the president of Columbia University at the dedication 
of the New York State Education Building in 1912 : 

" We must not shut our eyes to the fact that the task 
of the university grows greater as the difficulties of 
democracy grow heavier and more numerous. But the 
university dare not shrink from its responsibility, from 
its call to public service, from its protection of liberty. 
The university must not follow, it must lead. The uni- 
versity must not seek for popularity, it must remain true 
to principle. The university must not sacrifice its inde- 
pendence either through fear of criticism or abuse or 
through hope of favors and of gain. We dare not be 
false to our great tradition. Remember that, of all ex- 
isting institutions of civilization which have had their 
origin in the western world, the university is now the 
oldest, save only the Christian Church and the Roman 
Law. The university has witnessed the decline and fall 
of empires, the migration of peoples, the discovery of 
continents, and one revolution after another in the intel- 
lectual, social, and political life of man. . . . 

" The university has been at the heart and center of 
almost every great movement in the western world that 
has an intellectual aspect or an intellectual origin. Its 
responsibility was never so heavy as it is to-day. . . . 

"We are looking out, by common consent, upon a new 
and changing intelleetual and social sea. The sight is 
unfamiliar to the individual, but not to the university. 
The university has seen it so often, whether the change 
has been for good or for ill, that the university knows 
that, if only it keeps its mind clear and its heart true 
and the prow of its ship turned toward the pole-star, 
it will survive these changes, whatever they may be, and 
will contribute to make them beneficent. The university 
knows by long experience that it will come out of all 
these changes stronger, more influential, and bearing a 
heavier responsibility than ever. 

*' I do not speak of the university which is brick and 
stone and mortar and steel. I do not even speak of the 



THE PLACE OF THE UNIVERSITY 273 

university which is books and laboratories and class- 
rooms and thronging companies of students. I speak of 
the university as a great human ideal. I speak of it as 
the free pursuit of truth by scholars in association, partly 
for the joy of discovery in the pursuit of knowledge, 
partly for the service to one's fellow-men through the 
results of discovery and the pursuit of knowledge. 

" When I look back and remember what the univer- 
sity so conceived has done, when I remember the great 
names, the noble characters, the splendid achievements 
that are built forever into its thousand and more years 
of history, I think I can see that we have only to remain 
true to our high tradition, only to hold fast to our 
inflexible purpose, only to continue to nourish a disci- 
plined and reverent liberty, to make it certain that the 
university will remain to serve mankind when even the 
marble and steel of this great building shall have crum- 
bled and rusted into dust." 




APPENDIX 

A 

Columbia University, Compaeative Figubes fob the yeaes op 

THE adoption OF THE UnIVEBSITY REPOET, OF THE ELECTION AND 
BETIBEMENT OF PBESIDENT LoW, AND FOE 1913 

1857 1890 1901 1913 

Teachers 14 203 393 738 

Resident stu- 
dents 179 1,753 4,440 9,929 

Students receiv- 
ing degrees and 
diplomas 27 332 610 1,660 

Books in li- 
brary, about.. 20,000 100,000 315,000 520,000 

Income $62,000 $519,000 $1,400,000 $3,048,092 

Assets (net) .. .$1,054,000 $11,365,000 $21,000,000 $54,000,000 

B 

SUMMAEY OF FINANCIAL STATEMENTS, 1912-13 
Itwome : Columbia Univ. Barnard Col. Teachers Col. Phar'cy 

Interest $402,029.21 $71,449.25 $95,751.58 $513.02 

Rents 700,372.72 

Student fees 764,136.041 f 47,308.50 

^^ifn+f"^7rL;.'" 1 100,472.81 495,377.49 i 

ceipts (room- ( ' ' j 

rent, etc.) 154,697.82 J [ 5,385.70 

Gifts 154,213.43 1,130.95 22,254.65 

Miscellaneous . . . 17,088.43 14,408.26 1,039.63 453.38 

Total $2,192,537.65 $187,461.27 $614,423.35 $53,660.60 

Expenditures : 

General adminis- 1 

trative expenses $151,775.00 j 

Salaries and de- J-$139,930.60 $509,087.50 $34,440.76 
partmental ex- 
penses 1,355,088.00 J 

Library 106,461.50 2,385.12 11,946.64 493.00 

Care of buildings 

and grounds . . 321,538.00 54,930.90 86,955.18 2,403.70 

Business adminis- 
tration 50,200.00 4,353.45 15,035.72 190.37 

Miscellaneous ex- 
penses 59,299.27 13,967.50 9,287.95 130.50 

Interest 115,945.00 2,716.97 4,050.00 

Reduction of debt 100,000.00 5,000.00 

Total $2,260,306.77 $218,284.54 $632,312.99 $46,708.33 

Surplus or deficit -$67,769. 12_$30,823.27-$17,889,64-}-$6,952.27 

275 



276 



APPENDIX 



Registration in All Faculties, November, 1904-13 

Note : The current figures given in the body of the book are for February, 1914. 



Students registered in : 


1904 


1905 


1906 


1907 


1908 


1909 


1910 


1911 


1912 


1913 




527 
363 
890 


557 
371 

928 


606 
398 

loot 


609 
420 
1029 


645 
467 
1112 


632 
513 
1145 


729 
521 
1250 


757 
607 
1364 


819 
590 
1409 


841 


Barnard College 

Total undergraduates 


623 
1464 


Faculty of Political Science 

Faculty of Philosophy 

Faculty of Pure Science 

Total non-professional graduate 
students 


148 
392 
160 

700 


174 
490 
140 

804 


177 
492 
139 

808 


210 
5:32 
155 

897 


239 
556 

158 

953 


251 
573 
167 

991 


316 
658 
193 

1167 


348 
705 
217 

1270 


366 
256 
1399 


1496 


Schools of Mines, Engineering, and 

Chemistry 

Fine Arts 


589 
109 
342 
560 

435 

640 

2675 


566 
139 
277 
424 

353 

792 

2551 


524 
112 
261 
352 

254 

726 


585] 677 
147 156 
247 318 


666 
153 
318 
307 

290 

974 


713 652 
176 149 
365 410 
816 346 


634 
154 
457 
336 
72 
420 

1379 
227 

3679 
334 

6148 


665 
159 




450 




298 
229 
891 


306 
950 


341 


School of Journalism 


1406 


288 
1476 


106 




441 


Teachers College (FactUty of Edu- 
cation) 

School of Practical Arts 


1345 
3?5 


Total profesfionHl students 


OOOQ 


2356 


SSm 


2708 


3259 3321 


3832 


Double registration 

Net total resident students 


218 
4U5G 


266 


155' IH'Z 
SsHti 4100 


216 
4540 


194 230 286 
4650 '54 46 5069 


S89 

6403 


Summer Session 


961 

184 

4833 

684 


lOlh 

280 

4755 

964 


U>41 

277 

4650 

1017 


1392 1532 
336 395 


1968 2C32 2973 '3002 


4^3<^ 




l86 
6132 

2250 


667 704 748 


1013 


Grand total regular students 

Students in extension courses and in 
special classes at Teachers College 


5156 
3055 


5677 
2879 


7411: 
182o] 


7938 
2404 


9002 
2939 


9929 
3644 



APPENDIX 



277 







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280 APPENDIX 

F 

GIFTS, BEQUESTS OF $50,000 AND ABOVE, AND CLASS 
MExMOllIALS 

(To the University Corporation unless othenvise indicated) 

1881— Stephen Whitney Phoenix, '59. 

On account of residuary estate. . (about) $210,000.00 
1886 — William H. Vanderbilt (To College of Physicians and Sur- 
geons before merger). 

The Medical School land and $400,000.00 

1886, 1889, 1895, 1910— Mr. and Mrs. William D. Sloane. 

For construction and endowment of Sloane Hospital 

for Women (about) $1,200,000.00 

1886, 1896 — Cornelius, William K., Frederick W., and George W. 
Vanderbilt. 

For erection and endowment of Vanderbilt Clinic in 

memory of William H. Vanderbilt $350,000.00 

For Institute of Anatomy $125,000 

1889— Estate of President and Mrs. F. A. P. Barnard. 

For benefit of library and to establish a fellowship 

and a medal (about) $86,000.00 

1890-1910— Mr. and ]\Irs. Samuel P. Avery. 

For purchase of books on architecture and allied 
arts in memory of Henry Ogden Avery .$150,000.00 
1891— Estate of Charles Bathgate Beck, 77. . (about) $312,000.00 
1891 — Estate of Daniel B. Fayerweather. 

Legacy used for erection of Fayerweather Hall, 

(about) $308,000.00 
1891— Estate of Charles M. Da Costa, '55. 

For benefit of the Department of Zoology. $100,000.00 
1892— William E. Dodge (Teachers College). 

For Main Building $80,000.00 

1892— George W. Vanderbilt (Teachers College). 

For land $150,000.00 

1892, 1912— Joseph Pulitzer. 

For establishment of Pulitzer Scholarship Fund, 

$350,000.00 
1893 — Estate of Hamilton Fish, '27. 

Applied toward purchase of new site $50,000.00 

1894 — Mrs. Caroline L. Macy (Teachers College). 

Building in memory of her husband, Josiah 

Macy, Jr $252,233.03 

1893 — J. Pierpont Morgan. 

Toward purchase of new site $100,000.00 

1893— William C. Schermerhorn, '40. 

Toward purchase of new site $100,000.00 

1893— D. Willis James. 

Toward purchase of new site $50,000.00 



APPENDIX 281 

1893— Cornelius Vanderbilt. 

Toward purchase of new site $100,000.00 

1896— Seth Low, '70. 

For erection of Library Building as a memorial to 
his father, Abiel Abbot Low (about) $1,100,000.00 
1896-1903— Mrs. A. A. Anderson (Barnard College). 

For Milbank Hall and Milbank Quadrangle, 

(about) $1,200,000.00 
1896 — Children and Nephew of the late Frederick Christian 
Havemeyer. 

For erection of building for Department of Chem- 
istry known as Havemeyer Hall $450,000.00 

1896— Mrs. Mary E. Ludlow. 

For endowment of the Department of Music, in 
memory of her son, Kobert Center. .. .$178,000.00 
1896— William C. Schermerhorn, '40. 

For erection of building for natural sciences, 

known as Schermerhorn Hall $450,000.00 

1896 — Mrs. Van Wyck Brinckerhoff (Barnard College). 

For Brinckerhoff Hall $150,000.00 

1896— Mrs. Joseph M. Fiske (Barnard College). 

For Fiske Hall, a memorial to her husband, 

$150,000.00 
1898 — Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York (through 
public subscription). 

For establishment of George E. Waring Fund for 
instruction in municipal afTairs (subject to life 
interests of Mrs. and Miss Waring) . . .$100,000.00 
1897 — Joseph Milbank (Teachers College). 

Milbank Building $256,870.89 

1898, 1900, 1911— Gen. H. W. Carpentier, '48 (Barnard College). 

To establish Henrietta Carpentier Fund for general 
endowment (subject to life interests) . .$250,000.00 
1899 — Anonymous. 

For endowment of Jacobi Ward for children in 

Roosevelt Hospital $50,000.00 

1899— John D. Rockefeller. 

For endowment of Professorship of Psychology, 

$100,000.00 
1899— John D. Rockefeller (Teachers College). 

For land $50,000.00 

1899, 1900 — Mrs. Caroline L. Macy (Teachers College). 

For endowment $175,000.00 

1900— William E. Dodge. 

For erection of building for Young Men's Christian 
Association kno^vn as Earl Hall, in memory of 

his son (about) $160,000.00 

1900— Mrs. E. T. Bryson (Teachers College). 

For endowment $83,827.85 



282 APPENDIX 

1900— Alumni Gifts. 

Toward erection of Alumni Memorial Hall, 

$100,000.00 
1901 — ^Anonymous. 

For endowment of Department of Chinese (Dean 

Lung Professorship) $225,000.00 

1901— Estate of Henry Villard. 

To be applied to the general uses of the University, 

$50,000.00 
1901— John D. Rockefeller (Barnard College). 

Toward Endowmient Fund $250,000.00 

1901 — Mr. and Mrs. James Speyer (Teachers College). 

Speyer School $133,024.47 

1901 — Mr, and Mrs. Valentine Everit Macy (Teachers College). 
Horace Mann School Building, in memory of Caro- 
line L. Macy (about) $450,000.00 

1903— Gen. H. W. Carpentier, '48. 

For establishment of James S. Carpentier Fund for 

the benefit of the Law School $300,000.00 

1903 — Mrs. Henry Hartley Jenkins and Marcellus Hartley 
Dodge, '03. 
For erection of dormitory known as Hartley Hall, 

in memory of Marcellus Hartley $350,000.00 

1903— Estate of Dorman B. Eaton. 

For endoAvment of Chair of Municipal Science and 

Administration $100,000.00 

1903— Joseph F. Loubat. 

For endowment of Loubat Professorship of American 

Archaeology $100,000.00 

1903, 1911, 1912— Estate of Joseph Pulitzer. 

For the establishment of the School of Journalism, 

$1,000,000.00 
1904— Edward D, Adams, 

For establishment of a Fellowship in Physical 
Science, in memory of Ernest Kempton Adams, 

E. E., '97 $50,000.00 

1904— Gen. H. W. Carpentier, '48. 

Toward establishment of a professorship in the 
Medical School, in memory of his brother, Reuben 

S. Carpentier $100,000.00 

1904 — Adolph Lewisohn. 

For erection of School of Mines Building, 

(about) $300,000.00 
1904 — Misses Olivia Phelps Stokes and Caroline Phelps Stokes. 

For erection of St. Paul's Chapel (about) $250,000.00 
1904— Mrs. William E. Dodge (Teachers College), 

For land $50,000.00 

1904— Estate of William E. Dodge (Teachers College), 

For land $50,000.00 

1904 — James Spever (Teachers College), 

For'laud $50,000.00 



APPENDIX 283 

1905 — ^Mrs. Frederick Ferris Thompson (Teachers College). 

Physical Education Building, in memory of her 

husband $400,000.00 

1905 — John Stewart Kennedy. 

For erection of Hamilton Hall $500,000.00 

1905, 1906, 1907— John D. Rockefeller (Teachers College). 

For endowment $500,000.00 

1905— Jacob H. Schiff. 

For endowment of Professorship of Social Economy, 

$100,000.00 
1905 — James Speyer. 

For establishment of Theodore Roosevelt Professor- 
ship in the University of Berlin $50,000.00 

1906, 1909— Mr. and Mrs. George Blumenthal. 

For scholarships in the School of Medicine and for 
establishment of a Chair in Politics. . .$114,575.00 
1906 — ^Mrs. Maria H. Williamson. 

For establishment of professorhip or lectureship on 
the origins and growth of civilizations among 

men (Edward R. Carpentier Fund) $250,000.00 

1906 — Anonymous Donors (Barnard College). 

For construction of Brooks Hall, named in memory 

of Rev. Arthur Brooks (about) $250,000.00 

1906 — Anonymous (Teachers College). 

For endowment $50,000.00 

1906— Mrs. William E. Dodge (Teachers College). 

For endowment $50,000.00 

1907 — ^Anonymous. 

For establishment of Henry Bergh Fund, to be used 
for the inculcating of a spirit of kindness and 
consideration toward the lower animals, 

$100,000.00 
1907 — ^Miss Grace H. Dodge (Teachers College). 

Whittier Hall stock $125,000.00 

1907 — ^]VIr. Charles W. Harkness (Teachers College). 

Whittier Hall stock $50,000.00 

1907, 1908, 1909, 1910— Miss Grace H. Dodge (Teachers College). 

Household Arts Building (about) $450,000.00 

1908 — Children of the late Rev. Orlando Harriman, '35. 

For endowment of Professorship of Rhetoric and 

English $100,000.00 

1908 — Anonymous. 

For cancer research $50,000.00 

1908— Estate of D. Willis James. 

Applied toward salary of Professor of Geology, 

$100,000.00 
1908 — Estate of Lura Currier. 

Bequest to establish Nathaniel Currier Fund xor 
the Library $50,000.00 



284 APPENDIX 

1908— Estate of Emily O. Gibbes (Barnard College). 

For endowment fund (subject in part to life inter- 
ests) (about) $378,000.00 

1 909 — Anonymous. 

Toward erection of Kent Hall $100,000.00 

1909 — Estate of John Stewart Kennedy. 

On account of legacy set aside as an Endo\\'ment 

Fund (about) $2,177,000.00 

1909, 1910 — Mrs. Helen Hartley Jenkins. 

For endowment of Teachers College $1.')0,000.00 

For erection of Philosophy Building $350,000.00 

1910 — Estate of John S. Kennedy (Teachers College). 

For land $50,000.00 

1910 — Anonymous. 

For establishment of John W. Burgess Fund, to be 
applied toward the general endowment of the 

University $100,000.00 

1910— George J. Gould. 

Toward purchase of East Field $100,000.00 

1910 — Frank A. Munsey. 

Toward purchase of East Field $50,000.00 

1910— William K. Vanderbilt. 

Toward purchase of East Field $136,250.00 

1910 — Estate of John Stewart Kennedy (Barnard College). 

Legacy (about) $50,000.00 

1911 — Many Contributors. 

Fund in honor of Richard Watson Gilder, for study 
of political and social conditions (about) $50,000.00 
1911— Samuel P. Averj'. 

For erection of Avery Architectural Library Build- 
ing, in memory of his parents and his brother, 

inii -c i * t r^ r^ 1 $330,000.00 

1911 — Estate of George Crocker. 

To establish fund for cancer research, 

inio TIT 17 1 • I r. t:' 11 (about) $1,440,000.00 

1912 — Mrs. Frederick P. Furnald. ^ />*'>. 

For erection of dormitory known as Furnald Hall, 

in memory of her son, Roval Blackler Furnald, 

of the Class of 1901 " $300,000.00 

1912— Mr. and Mrs. William R. Peters. 

For establishment of a fund for engineering research, 

in memory of William Richmond Peters, Jr.. of 

the Class of 1911 $50,000.00 

191 3 — Anonymous. 

For establishment, later, of Fine Arts Endo\vraent 

Fund $250,000.00 

1913 — Estate of Mrs. Annie P. Burgess. 

For general endowment and for est-ablishment of 

scholarships (about) $67,000.00 

1913 — Mrs. W. Bayard Cutting and Children. 

For establishment of Cutting Travelling Fellow- 

sbips, in memory of W. Bayard Cutting, '08, 

$200,000.00 



APPENDIX 285 

Class Memos'^ als Presented on Graduation or at Anni- 
versaries 

74, College: 

Ornamental clock in Reading Room of Library. 
77, College: 

Portrait of Alexander Hamilton. 
'80, College and Mines: 

Wrought iron doors, Hamilton Hall. 
'81, College, Mines, and Political Science: 

Plagpole with granite and bronze base. 
'81, College and Mines: 

" The Gemot," Hamilton Hall. 
'82, College: 

Wrought-iron gat?; 

Stained glass window, College Stuay. 
'82, Mines: 

Bronze torcheres in front of School of Mines. 
'83, College, Mines, and Political Science: 

Bronze torcheres in front of Chapel. 
'84, College: 

Marble doorway and clock, Hamilton Hall. 
'84, Mines: 

Improvement of South Field for athletic purposes. 
'85, Mines: 

Fellowship Fund of $8,200. 
'85, College: 

Stained glass window, " Sophocles," Hartley Hall ; 

Granite Sun Dial. 
'86, College: 

" American Literature Library." 
'86, Arts, Mines, and Political Science: 

Marble Exedra. 
'87, College: 

Venetian Weil-Head. 
'87, Mines: 

Student Loan Fund of $7,200. 
'88, College and Mines: 

Wrought-iron gates. 
'90-92, College and Mines: 

Mapes Memorial Gate. 
'91, College: 

Stained glass window, " Vergil." 
'99, College and Mines: 

Improvement of South Field for athletic purposes. 
'00, College and Applied Science: 

Power Launch " 1900." 
'01, College and Applied Science: 

For endowment of Committee on Employment for Students. 
'02, College: 

Picture, " The Round Table of King Arthur." 



286 APPENDIX 

'05, Law: 

Portrait of Chancellor Kent. 
'10, et seq.. College: 

Collection of engravings, Hamilton Hall, "Dean Van Am- 
ringe Fund." 
'12, Law: 

Clock in Kent Hall. 
'13, Law: 

Moot Court furniture. 



INDEX 



Abbott, Nathan, 148 

Academic exchanges among the 
colleges and universities of the 
U. S., 40 

Academic freedom at Columbia, 
149, 160 

Academic machinery, dangers of 
too much, 232 

Academic senate, authorized by 
trustees, 41 

Academic titles, 146 

Academy of Political Science, 255 

Acta Columbiana, 195 

Administration, unity of, 34, 36 ; 
success of present system of 
academic, 231-32 ; difficulties 
arising in connection with, 
234-35 

Administrative boards, 140, 142 

Administrative staff, the, 58-63 

Admission, early standards of, 
44 ; present standards, 45-47 ; 
personal consideration of each 
case, 47-48 ; method of, in early 
days, 226-27 

Admission to professional and ad- 
vanced studies, 48-51 

Adrain, Robert, mathematical 
scholar, 166 

Advanced work, urged by Pres. 
Barnard, 100 ; organized under 
Prof. Burgess, 101 ; women ad- 
mitted to, 102 

Advisers, Faculty, 18, 109, 157, 
218-19 

Agriculture, 43, 242 

Alumni, gifts of, to Columbia, xi, 
66, 97 ; high proportion of dis- 
tinguished, 5 ; made possible 
purchase of South Field, 71- 
72 ; appointed to faculty, 147 ; 
entered academic life else- 
where, 147 ; returned to Co- 
lumbia from professional life, 
148 ; among presidents, 169-70 ; 
attitude of, toward football, 
191, 192; associations. 201-03; 
representation on board of trus- 
tees, 203 ; singing on com- 
mencement night, 225 ; influ- 
ence of, on organization and 
college life, 238-40 
Alumni Council, 203. 204 
Alumni Day, 203, 216-17 



Alumni Federation, 204 

Alumni fellowships, establish- 
ment of, 147 

Alumni News, 203 

American Farmer, The, on college 
in large city, 254 

American Mathematical Society, 
255 

American Museum of Natural 
History, alliance with, 38 

American Pharmaceutical Asso- 
ciation, 132 

Amherst men called to Columbia, 
147 

Anatomy, Museum of, 96 

Anderson, Dr. Henry James, 
4, 11, 166 

Annapolis, students of Naval 
Academy at, in Columbia, 250 

Annual Reports, 92 

Anthon, Charles, testified before 
committee on college course, 6 ; 
editions of classics, 159 ; dis- 
tinguished service of, 168-69 

Applied Science, Faculty of, 119- 
20 ; desires factory for com- 
mercial research, 265 

Architectural design, intercollegi- 
ate contests in, 218 

Architectural scheme, 72, 79, 82- 
86 

Architecture, Department of, es- 
tablished, 21 

Ashmore, S. G., 147 

Association of American Univer- 
sities, 153 

Athletic conditions, responsibility 
for, 201 

Athletic sports, 189-93 ; begin- 
nings of, 189 ; individual cham- 
pions and heroes, 189-90 ; row- 
ing, 190; track athletics, 190- 
91 ; baseball and basket-ball, 
191 ; football, 191-92 ; minor 
sports. 192-93 ; problem of gen- 
eral participation in, 193 

Auditors, women admitted as, 
102; abolished, 138 

Austria, agreement with, for visit- 
ing professors, 38 

Avery library, 83 ; beauty of read- 
ing room in, 85 ; collection of 
Fine Arts books, 91 

Avery, Henry Ogden, library 
memorial to, 91 

Avery, S. P., 91 



287 



288 



INDEX 



Baldwin, Charles S., 148 
lianas, F. S., 180 
Bangs, John Kendrick, on old 
building, 187; edited Acta, 
105 ; verse of. 106 
Bard, Dr. Samuel, 11, 124, 165, 

167 
Barnard. Frederick A. P., xlli ; ap- 
pointed president, 12 ; person- 
ality. 12-13; reports of, 13-14; 
summary of work of, 14 ; advo- 
cated elective system, 14-16 ; on 
discipline, 16-17 ; made pro- 
vision for graduate work, 18- 
10 ; established School of Polit- 
ical Scionco, 10 ; attitude toward 
vocational training, 20-21 ; sup- 
ported School of Mines, 21 ; 
favored training of teachers, 
22-23, 128 ; championed higher 
education of women, 23-24, 112- 
13 ; personality and fame, 25- 
26 ; memorials to. 26-27 ; real 
leader of university movement, 
30 ; bequest of, to college, 71 ; 
Income of college under, 71 ; 
on Income from fees, 74 ; on 
debt, 75 ; urged graduates to 
work of investigation, 100 ; fa- 
vored student self-government, 
100 
Barnard Alumnte Association, 

115, 202, 204 
Barnard College, established, 24- 
25, 27 ; incorporated In Uni- 
versity, 38-30 ; duties of pro- 
vost and dean of. 58-50 ; finan- 
cial assets of, 65, 115 ; first 
gifts to, 68 ; purchased site on 
Morningside Heights, 79 ; first 
home of, 80 ; description of 
buildings of, 86-87 ; Ubrary of, 
01 ; equipment for natural 
science, 05 ; works of art at, 
97 ; scholars of distinction 
added to faculty of. 102 ; indi- 
viduality of, 111-12; develop- 
ment of, 112-14; combined 
courses at, 114; growth and 
prestige, 114-15; Y. W. C. A. 
at, 174; student life at, 178; 
work of student assistants at, 
183 ; basket-ball at, 101 ; self- 
government at, 200 
Barnard College faculty and Uni- 
versity, 30 
Barnard fund for library. 26 
Barnard Literary Association. 195 
Barnard medal for meritorious 

serNice to science. 21, 20 
Barnard Professorship of Educa- 
tion. 27 
Bartlett. Prof., testified before 
committee on college course, 6 



Baseball. 191 ; game on com- 
mencement day, 225 

Basket-ball, 101, 212 

Beard, Charles A., 150 

Bequests to Columbia, 06, 67 

Bergson, Henri, 213 

Betts, William, member of com- 
mittee on college course, 4 

Bjerknes, Prof. W. F., on 
work required of professors, 
154 

Bloomingdale Asylum for the In- 
sane, site of. 78 

Boag, E. T., 165 

Boas, Franz, helped organize 
university in Mexico, 268 

Boathouse, site of, 86 

Books, total number of, in li- 
brary, 89 ; collections of, in 
New York and vicinity, 253 

Bookstore. University, 93 

Botanical garden, see Hosack Bo- 
tanical (iarden 

Boyeson, Hjaimar Hjorth, 156, 
162 

Bradley, W. A., on Acta Colum- 
biana, 105 ; " Imaginary Lec- 
tures " of, 196 

Brinckerhofif Hall, Barnard Col- 
lege, 86 

Britton, Nathaniel F., 11 

Brooks Hall. 87 

Brunner, A. W., designer of 
Mines Building. 85 

Bryn Mawr, men called to Co- 
lumbia from, 148 

P.ryson Library, 91 

Budget, preparation of the, 55- 
50. 214-15 ; approval of, 69 

Buildings, University, the central 
group, 82-86 ; other buildings, 
86-88 ; inscriptions on, 98 ; ad- 
ditional, needed, 243 ; at dis- 
posal of city and citizens, 254 

Burdick, F. M., 159 

Burgess, John W., 19 ; on uni- 
versity organization, 30-31, 44, 
50 ; initiated School of Political 
Science. 100 ; appointed dean of 
graduate faculties. 101 

Burnside. Charles II.. 148 

Burr. William II., 147. 159 

Bursar, duties of the. 62 

Butler. Nicholas Murray, xiii, 23, 
29-30, .35, 48-49, 52, 56. 65, 66, 
08, 105. 128. 141, 145. 159, 
17.5. 105. 226, 231, 246, 257, 
266, 271-73 



Camp Columbia, buildings at, 88, 

174 ; students at. 207 
Cancer research. 84 
Canfleld. James II.. developed ef- 

flciencv of library, 89; death 

of, 162 



INDEX 



289 



Carmalt, Charles Churchill, death 
of, 163 

Carnegie Foundation, pensions, 
73 

Carpenter Memorial Library for 
English, 92, 164 

Carpenter, George Rice, woric of, 
107 ; in memoriam, 163-64 

Carpenter, W. H., 58 

Carpentier, II. W., 92 

Carryl, Guy Wetmore, and Co- 
lumbia plays, 193 

Case system of instruction in 
Law School, 117 

Catalogues, annual, 92-93 

Catholic students, club of, 174 

Cattell. James McK., called from 
Pennsylvania, 147 ; as editor, 
159-60 

Centralization of control, in 
American universities, 231 ; in 
Columbia, 232. 235-37 

Certificate system of admission, 
46. 234 

Chairs, professorial. Departments 
descended from, 143, 146 

Chandler, Charles F., 10, 118, 132, 
155, 169, 187 

Chaplain, home for, 86 

Charter of King's College, lib- 
erality of, xi, 5 

Charter of an American univer- 
sity proposed by Governors of 
King's College, 2 

Chemistry, 8, 143 

Chess Team, 214 

Chicago, men from, 148 

Chinese books, collection of, 92 

Church, Francis P., 214 

Churchman's Association, 174 

Civil War, collection of newspa- 
per clippings relating to, 90 ; 
effect of, on college, 186-87 

Clark, .Tohn Bates, 152, 267 

Class Day, 220 

Class organization, 201 ; after 
graduation, 204-05 

Clinical clerkships. 124 

Clinton, DeWitt, first student to 
enter Columbia College, xil, 1 ; 
correspondence of, in library, 
90 ; work of, for education, 
128 ; tried commencement riot- 
era, 221 ; statue of, 266 

Cohn, Adolphe, 147 

Coles. Dr. J. Ackerman, 97 

Collections, scientific, 95-96 ; 
placed where they will do pub- 
lic good, 255 

College, the American, 4-5 

College dean, home for, 86 

College Entrance Examination 
Board, 17, 46-47 ; examinations 
of. in June, 226-27 ; brings in- 
stitutions together, 249 ; meets 
at Columbia, 255 

College Forum, 212 



College of Pharmacy incorporated 
in University, 38 ; requirements 
for, 51 ; financial assets of, 
65 ; had many homes, 80 ; pres- 
ent site, 82, 88 ; relation of, to 
University, and standards of, 
132 ; alumni association, 202 

College of Physicians and Sur- 
geons, brought back to Colum- 
bia, 9-10, 37, 120; Vanderbilt 
gift to, 25 ; proportion of an- 
nual expense met by earnings 
in, 74 ; description of buildings 
of, 87-88 ; organization and de- 
velopment of, 120-26 ; alumni 
association of, 202 

College Tavern, 188 

Collins, E. T., 192 

Columbia College, early financial 
struggles, xil ; wealthy in men 
who served her, xiil ; complex 
of schools clustered about, xiii- 
xiv ; academic troubles, xiv-xv ; 
students and type of instruction 
in, before 1857, 5-6 ; work of 
Pres. Barnard for, 14 ; present 
conditions, 105-11 ; alumni in 
faculty of, 147 ; students ad- 
mitted to advanced standing in, 
198 ; spirit of competition in, 
260 

Columbia Laic Review. 92, 178. 
183 

Columbia University Club, 205 

Columhia University Contribu- 
tions to Education, 94 

Columbia University Dramatic 
Association, 194, 213 

Columbia University Press, 93 

Columbia University Quarterly, 93 

Columbian, 196, 212 

Columbiana, 90, 167 

" Column," The, 194 

Combined course of collegiate and 
professional study, 49-51 ; op- 
portunities at Barnard for, 114 ; 
Dr. Slosson commends, 229 ; ex- 
tension of, to include indepen- 
dent college, 249 

Commencement, xiv, 219-25 

Committee on Admissions, 18, 47. 
109 

Committee on College Course, 4, 
6-8, 7-8 

Committee on Instruction, 102, 
107, 108, 259 

Competition, methods for intel- 
lectual, 110-11 ; as stimulus to 
good work, 259-60 

Contests, Class, 209 

Continental Congress, 221 

Controller, duties of the univer- 
sity, 61 

Controller of student organiza- 
tions, 201 

Convention, mock political, 218 

Cooper, Myles, revised curriculum 



290 



INDEX 



of college, 105 ; from Oxford, 
147 ; as president, 170 ; story 
of escape from college, 170- 
71 ; called to college, 248 

Cooper Union, alliance with, 38 

Cornell University, 2;51, 250 

Corporations, relations of inde- 
pendent, and university, 39-40, 
52 ; linancial assets of, 65 ; to- 
tal of budgets of, 215 

Council, The, see University 
Council 

Crampton, Henry E., 149 

Crews, famous, 190 

Crocker, Francis B., 147 

Crocker, George, bequest of, for 
cancer research, 123 

Cunliffo, .lohn \V., 133, 148 

Curriculum, revisions of college, 
lOS-OG ; undergraduate, articu- 
lated with public school sys- 
tem, 255 

Curtis, Carlton C, 160 

Curtis, George Wm., academic 
memorial to, 68 

Curtis, John G., administered 
Ilippocratic Oath, 223 

Custis, John Tarke, description of 
college life In letters of, 184- 
85 

Cutting, Leonard, 147 

D 

Dalton, Dr. John C, 120, 167 
Davies, Charles, 9, 147, 159 
Dean Lung Professorship, 92 
Deans, duties of, etc., 39, 58, 

215, 223. 2.'>9 
Debating, history of, at Colum- 
bia, 194-95 
Debating society, first, 185 
Debt and deficit, problem of, 75- 

77 
Degree with honors, 110-11 
Degrees, academic, held by pro- 
fessors, 146, 148; held by 
students, 107 ; number granted 
at Commencement, 222 
Delafleld, Dr. Francis, 120 
Department collections and read- 
ing rooms, 91-92 
Departmental organization, 36 
Departmental societies, 157 
Departments, of instruction, 69, 

74, 140, 141-44, 214-15 
Deutsches Ilaus, 86, 94, 255 
Devine, Edward T., 147, 2r.S 
Dewey, John. 148, 261. 2fi6-67 
Dewey, Melvil, appointed li- 
brarian, 89 
Directors, duties of the, 58 
Discipline, student, In Report of 
Com. on College Course, 7 ; in 
early days, ISO 
Divisions, grouping of depart- 
ments in, 142-43 



Doctor of philosophy, degree of, 
first conferred, 20 ; first re- 
ceived by a woman, 102 ; num- 
ber conferred by Columbia, 
103 ; number of, and source in 
faculties, 148 ; as a badge of 
efliciency for teaching, 264 

Dodge, M. II., 225 

Dodge, Richard El wood, 159 

Dodge, W. E., gave Earl Hall, 174 

Dormitories, 83, 85 ; and student 
life, 174 ; self-governing, 200 ; 
well filled, 208-09 ; Christmas 
festivities in, 213 

Eorms, The, 211 

Dormitory for women, 87 

Dow, A. W., work of, 127 

Drama, college, 193-94 

Dramatic museum, 90 

Drlsler, Henry, service of, to Co- 
lumbia, 169 ; presented with 
gold medal, 221 

Duer, William A., President, 170, 
172 

Dunning, William A., Lieber pro- 
fessor, 166 

Dwight, Theodore W., xiv, 9, 20- 
21, 30 ; influence and method 
of instruction of, 115-16, 167 

E 

Earl Hall, 83, 174, 210 

Earle, Mortimer L., called from 
Bryn Mawr, 148; death of, 
163 

Early Eighties, 205 ; on Alumni 
Day, 216-17 

Earning capacity, problem of, 
73-75 

East Field, 84, 88 

East Hall, site of, 86 

Education, a science, Pres. Bar- 
nard on, 14, 22-23 ; Columbia's 
share in development of, 127- 
28 ; national interest in higher, 
228 ; extraordinary development 
of, in United States, 233 ; re- 
search in, 205 

Education, primary, new plan of 
I'rofessors Dewey and Russell 
for, 266-67 

Educational Museum, 96 

Educational licvicw, 94, 159 

Egbert, J. C. 137 

Egleston, Thomas, 10, 118, 147, 
167 

Egleston Mineraloglcal Museum, 
96 

Elective courses, 14-16, 106 

Eliot, Charles W., 26 

Ely, R. T.. 147 

Employment secretary, 62 

EncycIoi)edla Britannica, 159 

Endowment, gifts for, 66 

Engineer, influence of. 117-18; so- 
cial responsibility of, 261 



INDEX 



291 



Engineering, courses in, 21, 118- 
19, 198, 244 

Engineoring Building, 83 

Engineering School, admission re- 
quirements, 51 

English, as college subject, 106 ; 
largest department, 143 

Entrance examinations, 46-47 

Equipment. 94-98 

Ersliine, John, 182-83, 192. 193 

Examinations, 47, 110, 208, 212, 
216, 219 

Exchange professorships, 248 

Extension Teaching, under control 
of council, 43 ; beginnings and 
development of. 137-39 

Externalism, 231-32 



Faculties, University, 39, 140-41, 
142, 235-36, 237-38 

Faculty, underlying interest of, 
140 ; strength and usefulness of, 
142 ; relations between stu- 
dents and, 155 

Faculty budgets. 141, 144 

Faculty Club, 86. 151, 215, 238 

Faculty of Education, 142 

Faculty of Fine Arts. 127, 142 

Faculty of Philosophy, need for, 
30 ; created, 101 ; relations with 
Teachers College, 101 

Faculty of Political Science, 100- 
01 ; relations with the Law 
School, 101 ; public debates by 
members of, 255 

Faculty of Practical Arts, 142 

Faculty of Pure Science, 100 ; 
founded in School of Mines, 
101, 118 ; relations mth Medi- 
cine and Engineering, 101 ; 
present strength, 240 

Faculty-senior baseball game, 157, 
220 

Farm, at Fishkill, 82. 88 

Fayerweather Hall, 83 

Fees, student, income from, 70, 
71, 73-75 

Fellowships, provision made for, 
19 ; twenty-four established, 
103 

Festschriften, 154 

Financial assets, 65-66 

Fine Arts, 16, 241 

Fine Arts collections, Avery li- 
brary one of the great, 91 ; cat- 
alogue of the university, 96 

Fish, Hamilton, trustee, xiii ; 
member of committee on college 
course, 4 

Fish, Hamilton, III. 190 

Fisher, George, 165 

Fiske Hall, Barnard College, 86 

Football, abolition of, xiv, 191-92 

Forestry, 242 

Forty-Niners, 205 



Forty-ninth Street site, sale of, 
75 ; occupation of, 78 

France, agreement with for visit- 
ing professors, 38 

Fraternities, Greek letter at Co- 
lumbia, 176-77, 211-12 

Freshmen - Sophomore contests, 
209, 213 

Functional administration, 37 

Furnald Hall, 83, 85 

G 

Gebhard, Frederick, bequest of, 70 

Gemot, the, 188 

Germany, agreement with, for vis- 
iting professors, 38 

Giddings, Franklin H., 148 

Giddings and Shotwell, collections 
of original documents, 159 

Gifts to Columbia, 66-69 ; sources, 
66-68 ; value of freedom in use 
of, 68-69 

Gilder, Richard Watson, memorial 
fellowship to, 68 

Gildersleeve, Virginia C, Dean of 
Barnard College, 112 

Gill, Laura D., Dean of Barnard, 
114 

Goetze, F. A., Dean of Faculty of 
Applied Science. 119 

Goodnow, Frank J., farewell trib- 
ute to, 154-55 ; services of, at 
Washington and in China, 268 

Goodwood Cup awarded to most 
popular junior, 188 

Graduate faculties, the. 99-104 ; 
Political Science, 100; Philoso- 
phy, and Pure Science, 101 ; 
problems of. 104, 260 

Graduate students, at Teachers 
College, 179 ; proportion of, in 
student body, 197 ; migration 
of, 250 ; fitness for research, 
263 

Graduate study, established on a 
permanent basis, 14 ; Pres. Bar- 
nard on, 18 ; in science, 20 

Greek games, Barnard, 178, 219 

Grounds and buildings, office of, 
61 

Growth by treaty, policy of, 36, 
112 

Growth, percentage of, in entire 
institution, 244 

Guyot, Arnold, 8 

Gymnasium, the, 95, 206-07, 209, 
212, 222, 223 



Hackley, C. W., from West Point, 

147 
Hadley, Arthur T., on combined 

course, 50 
Haight. Charles C, architectural 

scheme of, 79 



292 



INDEX 



Ilall, Charles Cuthbert, death of, 
163 

Hamilton, Alex., trained at King's 
College, xii, 2 ; organized Uni- 
versity of State of New York, 
127 ; helped Myles Cooper, 170, 
185 ; statue of, 2G6 

Hamilton Uall, 83, 85, 91, 97, 
188 

Hamlin, A. D. F., 126-27 

Ilarkness, Edward S., gifts of, 
96 ; provided surgical pavilion 
at Presbyterian llospital, 124- 
25 

Harper, Robert A., called from 
Wisconsin, 148 ; Torrey Profes- 
sor of Botany, 166 

Harpur, Robert, from Glasgow, 
147 

Harris, William, President, 170, 
172 

Harris, William T., 26 

Harrison, Henry Sydnor. 193 

Hartley Hall, 83, 213. 214 

Harvard University, financial as- 
sets compared with, 71 ; men 
called to Columbia from, 147 

Havemeyer Hall, 83 

Henley, winning crew at. 188 

Herbarium of Prof. Torrey, 69 

Herter, Christian Archibald, 163 

Hervey, W^alter L., 128 

Hewitt, Abram S., organizer of 
Alumni Association, 201 ; at 
dedication of new site, 252 

Hippocratic Oath, 22.3-24 

Hispanic Society. 255 

Hiss, Philip Hanson, 163 

History, department of, 143 

Holland, agreement with, for vis- 
iting professors, 38 

Honor courses, 110-11, 183, 245, 
259 

Honorary degrees, 224 

Hopkins, E. W., 147 

Hopkins, Mark, 6 

Horace Mann School. 87, 130-31 

Hosack, Dr. David, 11 

Hosack Botanical Garden, gift of 
State to college, 3, 70 ; Income 
from grounds of, 66 ; portion of, 
sold, 76 ; scheme to build on, 
78 J secured for college. 171 

Hospital Interneshlps, 260 

Hospital opportunities for medi- 
cal students. 123-25 

Household Arts building. 87, 243 

Howells and Stokes, architects of 
chapel, 85 



" Igala," student play, 193 
In Memorlam, 162-64 
Income, 3, 33, 70-71 
Industrial Education Association, 
128 



Inscriptions on buildings, 98 
Institute of Arts and Sciences, 

137, 139, 212 
Institutions sending graduates to 

Columbia, list of. 197 
Inter-class song contest, 217 
Intercollegiate Civic League, 

218 



Jackson, A. V. W., 149 

.Tames. William, 154, 213 

Janeway, E. G., 91, 165 

Jay, John, xii, 2, 200 

Jefferson, Thomas, 26 

Jester, 196 

Jewish students. 179-81 

Johnson, Samuel, first president, 
prophetic vision of, xiii, 5 ; 
announcement of King's Col- 
lege, 64; from Vale, 147, 170; 
foremost educator of his 
time, 170 ; prayer composed by, 
210 

Johnson, William Samuel, from 
Vale, 170; first lay president, 

170, 171 ; of national influence, 

171, 266 

Journalism, work in, 95, 133-34, 

259 
Junior Week, 216 



Keen, Dr. W. W., on students, 
156 

Keener, William A., 116, 147, 
167 

Keener and Burdick, collections 
of cases by, 159 

Kemp, John, 11 

Kennedy, John Stewart, bequests 
of, xlii. 67 

Kent Hall, 83, 85 

Kent's Commentaries based on 
law lectures, 6, 115 ; influence 
of, 266 

Keyser, Casslus .!., 151. 166 

King, Charles, I'resident, 4, 6, 12, 
57, 170, 172, 189, 242 

King, Gen. Charles, 186-87 

King, Rufus, trustee, 172 

King's College founded by New 
Yorkers, xi ; part of. in found- 
ing Republic, xii ; Pres. John- 
son's announcement of, 64 ; 
funds of, 65 ; original charges 
of, 73 ; site of, 77 ; library 
of, 88-89; list of students, 
92 

Klrby, Gustavus T., 190 

Knox, G. W., death of, 163 

Knox, Dr. John, member of 
Commiteee on College Course, 
4 

Kultusmlnlsterlum, 234 



INDEX 



293 



La Farge windows In chapel, 97 

Laboratories, development of, 94- 
95 

Laboratory methods of teaching, 
108 

Lamb, Hugh, 86 

Lambert, Dr. S. W., dean of Col- 
lege of Physicians and Sur- 
geons, 122, 123-24, 126 

Land, xii, 3. 66 

Landscape architecture, 242 

Lathrop. W. G., 189 

Law, 115, 261 

Law library, 91 

Law Revieio, 260 

Law School, see School of Law 

Lectures, public, 137, 159, 212-13 

Lee, Frederic Schiller, 9, 121, 
148 

Legislative drafting, gift for, 205 

Leland Stanford, men called to 
Columbia from, 148 

Library, the, memorial gift of 
Seth Low, 34 ; cornerstone of, 
laid, 80 ; central feature of 
architectural scheme, 82 ; in- 
terior of, 85 ; development of, 
89-91 ; need of support for, 
241-42 

Lieber, Francis, 6, 9, 147, 161, 
166, 266, 267 

Lima, university at, 249 

Limitation of numbers, problems 
of, 244-45 

Lindsay, S. McC, 147 

Literary Monthly, 196 

Literary societies, plays given by, 
194 

Livingston, Robert R., trained at 
King's College, xii, 2 

Livingston Hall, 83 

Lodge, Gonzalez, 148, 158 

London University, 245, 252 

Lord, Austin W., 127 

Low, Abiel Abbot, library a mem- 
orial to, 34 

Low, Seth, 29-35, 50, 65, 66, 
71, 76, 78, 80, 89, 102, 137, 
147-48, 150. 156, 199, 220, 221, 
226, 235, 246, 254, 267 

Lowell, A. L., 109-10, 220 

M 

McCuUoh, Richard S., 6, 167 

MacDowell, Edward A., 147, 163 

McGowan. Patriclj, 95 

McKim, Charles F., inscription in 
honor of, 79-80 

McKim, Mead, and White, archi- 
tectural scheme of, 72, 79-80, 
85 

McLane, Dr. James W., 25, 121, 
122, 167 

McMurry, Frank Morton, 159 



McVickar, John, formulated prin- 
ciples of banking system, 165 

Macy, Mr. and Mrs. V. Everit, 
gave Horace Mann building, 131 

Macy Manual Arts building, 87 

Maison B^rangaise, 86, 94 

Mapes, Charles H., Herbert and 
Victor, 189-90 

Marsh, G. P., " History of the 
English Language," 8 

Mason, John M., provost, 171-72 

Matthews, Brander, 16, 32, 147 

Mayo-Smith, Richmond, death of, 
162 

Mechanical engineering labora- 
tory, 94-95 

Medical School, 6, 76, 80. 88, 91, 
121-25, 147, 148, 167, 174, 241, 
243, 269 

Medicine, early requirements for 
course in, 44 ; students of, and 
university life. 178 ; reduction 
In students of, 244 ; training 
for students of, 259 

Memorials, academic, 67-68 

Merriam, Augustus C., 155, 162, 
166 

Metropolitan Museum of Art, al- 
liance with, 38 

Mllbank, Joseph, donor of Mil- 
bank Hall, Teachers College, 87 

Milbank Hall, Barnard College, 86 

Milbank Quadrangle, 86, 87 

Miller, Edmund Howd, 162, 163 

Mines Building, 83, 85 

Mining, laboratory equipment in, 
95, 160 

Mitchill, Dr. Samuel Latham, 11, 
166, 167, 266 

Monroe, Paul, Cyclopedia of Edu- 
cation. 159 

Moore, Benjamin, President, 170, 
171 

Moore, Clement C, " 'Twas the 
Night Before Christmas," 214 

Moore, John Bassett, 267, 269 

Moore, Nathaniel F., President, 
170, 172, 186 

Morgan, J. Pierpont, 90-91 

Morgan, T. H., 148 

Morley, W. R., 190 

Morningside, 196 

Mornincrfiide Heights, removal to, 
71, 79 

Morris. Connecticut, summer 
school of surveying at, 82, 119 

Morris, Gouverneur, xii 

Mosenthal, Joseph, memorial to, 
68 

Munroe, Prof. H. S., 118 

Museums, University, 96 

Musical organizations, 193 

N 

Nairne, Charles Murray, 9, 146, 
147 



294 



INDEX 



Nash. Stephen P., 30, 116 

National Academy of Design, 
agreement with, 30, 241 

National Academy of Sciences, 21 

Newberry, John S., 10, 11, 266 

New York Botanical Gardens, al- 
liance with, 38 

New York, City of, Columbia's 
debt to, xi, 252 ; fortunes of 
college and, bound closely to- 
gether, xil, 67 ; educational pos- 
sibilities in, 252-53 

New York College for the Train- 
ing of Teachers, alliance with 
Columbia, 128 ; name changed 
to Teachers College, 128 

New York Hospital, 124 

New York School of Philanthropy, 
alliance with, 38, 101, 103 

New York State, gifts of, to Col- 
lege, 3 

New York State Legislature, 
tract of land given to College 
by, xil ; adopted scheme for 
State university, 2 ; gift of, to 
College, 65 

New Y'ork University, xiv, 172 

New York World, 252-53 

New Yorkers, gifts to Columbia 
from, 67-68 

Nichols laboratory for chemistry, 
So 



Olcott, George N., death of, 163 
Older graduates, 205 
Opening days, 208-11 
Osborn, Henry Fairfield, 147 



Partridge, William Ordway, 196 
Pathology, department of, 120 
Peabody, George F. and Charles. 

gift of chapel organ from, !»8 
Peck, H. T., 145, 195, 196 
Peck. William G., 9, 147, 155-56 
I'eithologian Society, 194 
I'elicw, Charles Ernest, 157 
I'ennsylvania, University of, 120, 

147 
Pensions, 73 
Pharmacology and therapeutics, 

department of. established. 122 
Philolexian Society. 194, 195 
Philosophy P.uildlni:. 93 
Phwnix, Stephen Whitney, gift of, 

to College. 2.'.. 70-71. 89 
Physical education, 106, 143, 211 
Physics, 143 
Physiology, 120 
I'ine, ,lobn I?., xv. 78 
I'itkin, Walter B.. 257 
Plays. 193. 208, 217 
Poe. Edgar Allan, on Charles An- 

thon, 168-69 



PoUiical Science Quarterly, 93-94, 
159 

Politics, 95 

Popular Science Monthly, 160 

I'ortraits owned by University, 
97 

I'otter, Bishop Horatio, 7 

Practical Arts, School of, 129 

Presbyterian Hospital, 38, 88. 
124-25 

Prescribed course versus elective, 
106 

President, powers and duties of 
the, 39, 55-57 ; position among 
colleagues, 57 : overburdened, 
57-58 ; reports of. 93 ; passes on 
budget, 215 ; address of, at 
Commencement, 223 ; summary 
of year at alumni luncheon, 
224 ; responsible for appoint- 
ments. 233 ; oflice of. an Amer- 
ican invention, 233 ; powers and 
responsibilities of, 235 

President's House, 84, 85, 150. 
238 

Presidents, the. 169-72 

I'reventlve medicine, 242 

I'rice, Thomas K.. 160. 162 

Princeton, men called to Colum- 
bia from, 147 

Pritchett, Henry S., 239 

Professional schools. 14, 20, 37, 
48-51, 100, 141-42, 229, 244, 
258-60 

Professional students, proportion 
of. 197 

Professions, new, 244-45 

I'rofossors, xiv-xv, 146-60, 236. 
266-69 

Professorship, some holders of 
titled, 165-66; historical back- 
ground of European, 233 

Prosectorships. 183, 260 

I'rovost, 58, 59 

I'ublic hygiene, 242 

Public Library, 255 

Publications, 195-97 

Pulitzer, Joseph, 67, 133, 134, 
135. 251 

Pulitzer scholarships, the, 133, 
199 

Pupin, Michael I., 158 



Quarterly, see University Quar- 
terly 

Quiz, private, In medical school, 
122 



R 



Reading rooms, Department, 91- 

92 
Registrar, 61-62. 206-07 
Registration, total, in graduate 

schools, 103 ; in extension 



INDEX 



295 



courses. 138 ; in departments, 
143 ; of summer students, 200- 
07. See also Appendix 
Religion and morals at Columbia, 

174-76 
Religious toleration in original 

charter, xi, 5 
Rents, income from, 70, 71 
Renwick, James, 166. 26G 
Report of 1857, 1-2. 161. 248 
Research, 123, 125, 154, 158, 240, 

247, 263-65 
Revolution, the. eflfect of, on col- 
lege students, 185 
Rich, Charles A., architect of Bar- 
nard buildings, 86 
Rives, George L., 266 
Roads, good, gift for, 265 
Robinson, James Harvey, 147, 

159, 241 
Romanic Rerieic, 94, 159 
Rood, Ogden N.. 12, 162, 166-67 
Roosevelt professors, 248 
Rowing, 190 
Ruggles, Samuel, xlii 
Russell, James E.. 13. 129-30. 140, 

178-79, 244, 247, 266, 267 
Rutherfurd's Photographic Star 
Plates, 96 

S 

Sage, Mrs. Russell, 91 

St. Paul's Chapel, 83, 85-86, 97- 
98, 174, 210, 213 

Salaries, academic, 72-73, 144, 
153 

Sayre, Reginald H., 189 

Schermerhorn, F. Augustus, 21-22 

Schermerhorn Hall, 83, 85 

Scholarships, 74 

School of Architecture, 21-22, 
118, 126-27 

School of Arts, see Columbia 
College 

School of Education, see Teach- 
ers College 

School of Household and Indus- 
trial Arts, 51 

School of Journalism, 43, 51, 83, 
8.5 91 13.3-35 

School of Law, xiv, 9, 20-21, 
30. 44, 50, 80, 115-17, 177-78. 
202 

School of library economy, 89 

School of Mines. 10. 17. 20, 21, 
44, 118-20. 160. 177. 202 

School of Mines Quarterly, 94 

School of Political Science, 19, 
100. 133 

Schurz. Carl, memorial to, 68 

Science, 160 

Sculpture owned by T^niversity, 97 

Seager, Henry R., 147 

Secretary, duties of the, 60-61 

Seidl, Anton, academic memorial 
to, 68 



Self-government, student, 17, 199. 
200 

Seligman, Edwin R. A., 165 

Semi-annual Exhibition, 187-88 

Semi-centennial in 1837, 225 

Senff, Charles H., 92 

Seniors, 10, 50, 218 

Shepherd, William R., 149 

Sherman, Frank Dempster. 162. 
163, 196 y < , 

Short, Henry A., 167 

Singer, " Dean," 165 

Sites, 77, 78. 79-81. 226 

Slichter, W. I., 148 

Sloane Hospital, 38, 88, 123, 269 

Sloane, William M., 147 

Slosson, Dr. E. E., 28, 45, 107, 
154, 228-29, 232. 252 

Smith, Alexander. 148 

Smith, Charles Sprague, 156 

Smith, David Eugene, 158 

Smith, E. R., 96 

Smith, Emily J., dean of Bar- 
nard, 114 

Smith, Munroe, xv, 12, 20, 43, 
49, 50-51, 159, 245-46 

Social work, 210, 262 

Sophomore activities, 200, 209, 
2f3, 219 

South Court, 83, 86 

South Field, 71-72, 83, 211, 225 

Space, problem of, 71 

Special funds, gifts for, 66 

Spectator, 196 

Speyer School, 82, 87. 131, 269 

Stadium, plans for, 86 

" Stand Columbia," class poem, 
220 

Statutes of 1858, 8, 10, 11 

Stevens, John, xii 

Stokes, A. P., Jr., 270 

Stone, Harlan F., dean of Law 
School, 117, 148 

Stratton, George M., 231 

Student, increased opportunities 
for, 40 ; attention given to the 
individual, 108-10. 262; rela- 
tion to student body, 173-74 

Student Board of Representatives, 
200. 209. 218 

Student choir, 210 

Student clubs. 183. 185-86, 200 

Student earnings, 62 

Students, number of, x ; from 
1820-56. 5-6; matriculation of, 
in University. 32 ; fees of, cost 
of tuition, 74 ; distribution of, 
103 ; practical work for, in en- 
gineering, 119; opportunities 
for, in medicine, 123-24, 125, 
126 ; in architecture, 127 ; posi- 
tions taken by Teachers College, 
130 ; in journalism, 133, 135 ; 
attending summer session, 136, 
207 ; in extension courses, 138 ; 
relations with facultv, 155-58, 
183 ; manners of, 184 ; self- 



296 



INDEX 



Bupportinff, 198-99 ; work of, 
during summer, 207-08 ; efforts 
to assimilate new, 200-10 ; lim- 
itation of numbers of, 243-44 

Studies in llixtory, Economics, 
and Public Law, 94 

Subjects, in order of preference, 
among graduate students, 103 ; 
among college students, 106-07 

Summer camp, see Camp Colum- 
bia 

Summer session, 43, 118-19, 13.5- 
3(5, 179; preparations for, 206- 
08, 232 

Surgery, Department of, reorgan- 
ized, 122 

Suzzallo, Henry, 148 



Tappan, H. P., Chancellor, 7, 8 
Teachers College, organization of, 
23 ; incorporated into Univer- 
sity, 38-39, 128 ; local experi- 
ments In. 52 ; administrative 
staff of, 59 ; financial assets of, 
65 ; friends of, 72 ; proportion 
of expense mot by earnings in, 
74 ; and student limitation, 74 ; 
purchased land on Morningside 
Heights, 79 ; first home of, 
80 ; description of buildings, 
87 ; library of, 91 ; first report 
of, 93 ; publications of, 94 ; 
laboratories of, 95 ; physical 
education at, 95 ; works of 
art at, 97 ; origin and develop- 
ment of, 128-29 ; schools of 
education and practical arts, 
129 ; students and graduates 
of, 130 ; schools of observa- 
tion for, 130-31 ; relations of, 
to University, 131-32 ; special 
classes at, 138 ; value of pro- 
ductive work of, 158 ; Y. M. 
C. A. at, 174 ; student life at, 
178-79, 198 ; self-government 
at, 200 ; educational confer- 
ences at, 217 ; excursion and 
lawn partv, 220 ; growth of, 
240; gifts "to, 261 
Teachers College Alumni Associa- 
tion, 202, 204 
Teachers College Record, 94 
Teaching efflciency In, 47, 107, 

161, 257-61, 264 
Teaching staff, strengthened un- 
der Tres. Low, 32-33 ; number 
of members and organization of, 
140 
Tenure, permanence of, 150, 257- 

58 
Text-books, 8, 159 
Thanksgiving services, 21.'? 
Theolngicnl seminaries, 38, 103 
Thomas, Calvin, 243 
Thomas, Martha Carey, 148 



Thompson, J. J., 152 

Thompson Physical Education 

Building, 87, 95 
Todd, Henry Alfred, 159 
Tombo, Rudolf, 159, 203 
Tompkins, Daniel D., xii, 128 
Toronto, University of, 250 
Torrcy, Dr. John, 11, 09, 96, 132, 

166, 266 
Townscnd. Fitzhugh, death of, 163 
Track athletics, 190-91 
Trcadwell, Daniel, 147 
Trent, William P., 15, 269 
Trinity Church, xii, 3, 65-66, 77 
Trophy Room. Athletic, 96 
Trowbridge, Wm. Petit, 118, 147, 

266 
Trust funds, income from, 71 
Trustees, 24, 53-55, 66-67, 121, 

150, 153, 156, 203-04, 215, 

232-33. 237-38 
Tucker, Ervin A., death of, 163 
Tufts, Frank Leo, death of, 163 



Undergraduate activities. 181-89 

Undergraduate college, vital func- 
tion of. 245 

Undergraduate teaching, 161-62 

Undergraduates, 7, 157, 197, 216, 
261-62 

Union Theological Seminary, 40, 
81 

Unity, architectural, 82 

Universities. American, four 
strains of influence on, 228 ; 
criticism of organization of, 
12-30 ; centralization of power 
In, 231 ; contrasted In organiza- 
tion with English and Conti- 
nental, 233-34 ; weakness of, on 
a-sthetic side, 241 : co-opera- 
tion among, desirable, 249-50 ; 
association of, 249 ; centers of 
patriotism and progress, 270- 
71 

Universities, German and Amer- 
ican, 117; contrasted as to ad- 
ministration. 233-34 

University bibliography, 92, 160 

Universitv corporation, 40, 52, 
69-70. 72, 81-82. 197 

University Council, aid to admin- 
istrative unity. 36 ; powers as- 
signed to. 41-42 ; investigation 
conducted by, 42-43 ; Impor- 
tance of work of, 43 ; recom- 
mendation of, on comliined 
courses. 50 ; and graduate 
schools, 101 : place of. in organ- 
ization, 140; approves aca- 
demic calendar. 200 ; meetings 
of. 211 ; possible link between 
departments and trustees. 238 

Universitv <;reen. 83. 86, 208 

University Ilall, 82-83 



INDEX 



297 



University of the State of New 
York, 127 

University organization, initial 
steps toward, 29-31 ; conference 
about, 32 ; double pattern of, 
140 ; two schools of thought 
as to, 140-41 ; questions arising 
as to the present and future, 
229-30; centralization in, 232, 
235 ; need for elasticity in, 237- 
88 ; alumni control in, 238-40 

University physician, 211 

University Press, 52, 159, 242 

University Quarterly, 92-93, 152, 
159, 239-40, 256-57 

University teas, 150 

Upjohn, Richard, 78 

Upper Eighties, 205 

Upper estate, 76, 77 



Van Amringe, John H., preserver 
of historical traditions, xv ; on 
distinguished alumni, 5 ; on 
Pres. Barnard, 12 ; popularity 
of, 155, 169 ; interested in 
alumni association, 201 ; tribute 
to, at retirement, 221 

Vanderbilt Clinic, incorporated 
into University. 38 ; site of, 88 ; 
opportunities for medical stu- 
dents in, 123 ; attendance at, 
269 

Vanderbilt gift to College of 
Physicians and Surgeons, 25, 
67, 71, 120 

Vardill, John, 147 

•Varsity Show, 217 

Verplanck, Samuel, 1 

Vinton, Francis L., 10, 118, 147 

Virginia, University of, 250 

Visiting professors, 8-9, 38, 40-41 

W 

Walker, A. L., 148 
Ware, William R., 22, 126, 155, 
167-68 



Waring, Col., academic memorial 
to, 68 

Washington College, amalgama- 
tion with, considered, 78 

Washington, George, 94 ; of 1779, 
221 

Wayland, Francis, 6, 7, 26, 186 

Wealth, origin of Columbia's, x ; 
sources of present, 65-66 

Weed, Ella, dean of Barnard, 

Weekes, H. H., 190 

Weeks. Stephen, 164-65 

West Point, 5, 147 

White, Alfred, 90-91 

Whittier Hall, dormitory of 

Teachers College, 72 
Williams, Talcott, 133 
Wilson. E. B., 148, 158 
Wisconsin, University of, 148, 

Women, higher education of, 14 ; 
Barnard on, 2.3-24 ; first step 
made by trustees toward edu- 
cation of, 24 ; combined courses 
for, 50; gifts of, to Columbia, 
67 ; advanced courses for, 102 ; 
graduate instruction for, 113 ; 
what Columbia has done for, 
229, 269-70 

Woodberry, George Edward, 157, 
168 

Woodbridge, F. J. E., 104, 250, 
264 

Woodward. Robert S.. 11, 168 

Worthington and Allis engineer- 
ing laboratories, 95 



Yale University, 170, 249 
Young Men's Christian Associa- 
tion, 174 



Zinsser. Hans, 148 
Zoological Park, alliance with, 
38 



3477 



